Fresh air hushing through the untrimmed wild grass could coax ideas out of the deep dark wrinkles of the brain. Sunlight, even pale and wan, warmed their skin and all the thready vessels below. Nothing like a soothing stroll to keep the body in motion and relax the mind.

That was, when every inch of said body didn't ache. When said brain had been allotted more than five minutes of sleep. When the damned grass wasn't making them sneeze every second of the day. True stomped their way through the one hundredth sneezing fit, each stomp heavier than the last, as if they could crush the sneezes under their heel. It was childish. They were fine with that.

Radio padded quietly along behind them in high-laced hiking shoes that should have made a lot more noise than it did. Miserable creature.

They kicked a rock and listened to the crack of it against a distant tree trunk with an inkling of satisfaction. Focus, they had to focus. If the other scavengers were going to be yellow bellies about the Red Faction—and after Jonesy, True decided they would be—they needed a new plan.

All the ideas they drummed up ended in personal disaster. Death, death, and death with a side of fighting. What a fun variety of options.

They slowed to a stop, squinting at the sunbaked asphalt. One goal stood as the foundation for all their plots: Galya had traded her gun for revenge, and they were damn well going to honour that trade.

"Anything interesting down there?" A deep voice startled True, they flinched about six inches into the air and hard left of their skeletal system.

"Motherfuck!" they swore when their lungs relocated inside their ribcage.

"Caught you sleeping, did I?" The culprit, a suntanned behemoth farmer, chuckled. True didn't share his amusement, instead eyeing the three other forms that lurked along the edge of the copse that had hidden their approach. Four to one, those were bad odds.

"You look rough, bud, got into a tussle, huh?" The farmboy, who was batting three for three on opening his mouth to ask a question, stared openly south of True's eyes. Grimacing, true turned their bad side away from him.

"The After Market was attacked," the said.

Farmboy hemmed and hawed and nodded for an eternity, rocking his whole body with the waggles of his head. While he digested, the smallest of the forms flitted off along the edge of the ditch. Farmboy's head bobbled toward the movement, his gargantuan hand drifting to his hip, only stalled by a motion from on of his remaining buddies.

Right, that was as good a sign as any to leave.

Then Farmboy opened his mouth. "What's your name there, bud?"

True bit their tongue to keep from snapping, only because they had just enough active brain cells to know they'd lose that fight.

"True... Gallows."

Laughter brightened Farmboy. He was, evidently, the kind of person who laughed with his whole body.

"There's a name!"

They ground down until they tasted blood. At least he hadn't ended on a question mark this time.

"I'm Linc." He stuck out his bear paw to shake. True accepted it. "This is Mu and Cal."

The two remaining lingerers had made it to the crumbling shoulder of the highway, much to close for comfort. One tall, olive-skinned, with a face like a barn owl. Ther other shorter, with crossed arms and grey eyes that tracked everything. As long as they were comparing people to animals, that one looked like a feral cat. Each had a pack.

The tallest, the one Linc called Mu, rivaled Farmboy in size, but there was something infinitely less threatening about him. Maybe it was the way he waved until Cal elbowed his hip.

"And the other one?" True asked. They didn't care what any of these strangers names were, but they wanted Farmboy to know that they knew about the fourth person lurking around.

"That'd be Eliza. You don't gotta worry yourself about her." Linc said.

Like hell they didn't.

"Why don't you join us for supper? It's about that time and you can tell me about the Market," Farmboy clapped their shoulder, and seemed to take pleasure in the way True's teeth clattered.

True had hoped that part had whistled through the space between his ears and floated harmlessly into the atmosphere. The sun sank lower on the horizon and cast long burgundy shadows on the Earth. It was about time to start hunting for shelter, not sit down for a meal and a chat. Then again, safety came with numbers.

"You got a stay nearby?" They asked. If Farmboy Linc came equipped with a farmhouse, they wouldn't despise one miserable evening at his fire. A neon smile sparked on his mug. True doubted there was such a thing as a question that didn't make him beam like a kindergarten teacher. It was deeply unsettling in that it gave them the nagging feeling that they were the kindergartener.

"Sure!" he said. He strolled to the middle of the road and dragged his heel across it in a large, sloppy X. "Here looks good. Not too far a walk for you, is it?"

True blinked at the imaginary X for a long minute, waiting for Linc to crack another smile and drop the joke. But the only thing he dropped was his pack onto the asphalt.

How was this guy real?

"Yeah, no." If they walked really improbably fast they would make it to a ghost town that should have been somewhere along this highway. They'd expected to come across it already but apparently they were dragging their feet more than they thought.

"Aw, don't tell me you're afraid of a few shadow crawlies."

"Not afraid," True said. "Not inviting them to munch on me either."

A baseball mitt of a hand engulfed their shoulder, squeezing them tight to Farmboy Linc's sweaty side. His giant arm stretched around True and their pack with ease. Sweeping wide, he encompassed the road and his lingerers in his reach. "That's what our little buddies are for. No shadow crawly gets the jump on a well-trained bodyguard, and mine have to be well-trained because I got a lot of body to guard!"

Mu's towering shape had materialized over at the edge of the copse, and he lumbered back towards the X on the road with a fallen tree slung over his shoulder. Two packs slumped beside the X, but instead of kneeling beside the packs or pawing through the underbrush where True expected to see him, Cal strode down the blacktop. Back the way True had come from, the direction the third lingerer had disappeared towards. Linc bent, so close they could hear the wet pulling-apart of his lips and teeth and tongue while they watched a furious ball of limbs and rags erupt from the long grass and tumble on the asphalt.

Damn it. It wasn't like True cared much whether Radio lived or got torn apart by the road bandits, but at least it had a history of interfering in their favour.

"And if they fail they get eaten first, gives us plenty of time to run," he whispered in their ear. The ball splintered into two clumps, the clump that was Radio leaping its feet only to be seized by the Cal.

Linc guffawed, obnoxiously loud.

Yeah, there was a word. Guffaw. Farmboy Linc guffawed like he wanted every shadow dweller in a mile radius to come test his bodyguards.

Maybe they'd join the Red Faction instead. The Faction was a group of slimy brainless salamanders but at least they had the conviction to look the world in the eye while they lit it on fire. And True had never witnessed a factioneer tossing another factioneer to the cannibals.

Cold metal dug into True's cheek, chilling them from scalp to sole. The hammer of the handgun clicked in place. "You don't like my jokes? Well maybe I should kill you right now and feed you to that shadow crawly, huh?"

"If you kill me," True said, slow, reaching for the right words through the exhaustion haze and adrenaline spike, "you'll never know what happened to the After Market."

"I'll find another survivor."

"There aren't any."

Linc's grip tightened, turning True's breaths shallow. He could probably squeeze them until they popped, never mind that gun.

"How'd you make it out?"

"I knew it was coming."

Click.

They flinched. Pain, then darkness. That's how it went, right? If you were lucky. Just like a concussion, except you didn't wake up afterward with a splitting headache.

It came as a pleasant surprise when True opened their eyes and found the only ringing in their ear was Linc bent over in uproarious laughter. Face red, whole body heaving. Well, not pleasant. But a surprise, nonetheless.

"That's not fucking funny." They shoved him, causing barely a hiccup in his guffawing.

"Sure it is." He jostled them and held out his gun, trigger finger wiggling as if to say look, stupid, I was never near that trigger. But True had heard the hammer on that tiny silver thing strike. The echo of their own doom wasn't going to fall out of their skull just because Linc brayed louder than a donkey. That jackass had pulled the trigger.

"Tell you what though, this thing is small, but it keeps those guys in line." Another laugh at his ingenuity. Another bone-jostling pat on True's back. "Come on, sit at my fire tonight. Tell me about the Market, and I'll provide the food. I'm starving."

True hesitated, gathering their wits. Food was food, and the sky had darkened in the time they'd lost to Farmboy Linc's shenanigans. Glancing up the road to where Radio had been penned-in by the feral cat and his fox twin, they gave in to following Linc. A night out in the open it was. They'd sleep with one eye open, if they slept at all.

Flint sparked, fire blazed. All five travelers curled into the safety within the light's boundaries. No matter how well-armed or well-guarded a person made themselves, the dark was the dark. Even the night sky needed the moon to keep it safe.

By the time Linc had knifed open the tops of a few dented cans, True had fished a silver spoon from their loot bag. It had been hanging on someone's kokum's wall for so long that when they'd pried it off the paint beneath it had been shades lighter. Linc admired the red barn painted on the tip of the handle before swapping the spoon for a can of maple beans in True's hand.

Cat and Fox shoved Radio, hands bound, to its knees in the circle. What were their names again? Cal and Eliza? Yeah. Cal reached to accept a can from Linc, Eliza did not. Up close the fox looked effeminate, in a malnourished, vampiric kind of way. Unease had True looking twice at her sallow skin and sunken cheeks. Were her irises jiggling or was that a trick of the wavering flames?

"You're extra spooky in the dark, you know?" Linc interrupted their staring spree. He waved an open can at them. "The fire makes your face holes look all lit up like a jack o'lantern."

They leaned farther from the light of the flames. They wished he would pick a different reaction to their face. Preferably unnerved silence, which Cal seemed to have settled on. Or even the bald-faced staredown that Mu was giving them. At least Mu was doing it quietly.

"Hey, now, don't get all hurt on me, Trudy. Your skin's thicker than that, isn't it?" Linc was saying around a mouthful. It took True a beat to realize he was addressing them.

"It's True," they said.

"It is!"

Comedic gold. What a hilarious joke. True shoved a sporkful of beans in their mouth and waited for Farmboy Jokes to recover from his own comedy. At the peak of his hearty chucklefest, when his eyes were turned to slits by the breadth of his mouth, Mu stretched a long arm out and pressed his palm to the Eliza's. A kernel of corn slipped out between her knuckles but by the time it plipped on the ground the rest of the corn had disappeared past her gullet. She crammed the heal of her hand to her lips to smother the lurch from inhaling the food too fast.

Cal's knee tapped Mu's, stalling his next handful. True caught Cal's wary gaze boring into them while the laughter began to peter out and Mu retracted.

Shifting grass all along the highway harmonized with the popping coals to fill the precious quiet. Linc began to inflate. Barrel chest expanding in preparation for his next amazing quip or his one hundred millionth question.

"The Red Faction blew up two After Markets this week," True said. They truly could not stand another word out of his mouth, and the only peaceful option was to fill the silence with their own voice. Talking filled a few minutes, sneezing filled almost as many, and by the time they'd recovered, Linc had been thumping their back and chortling at them for just as long.

"Quite a kerfuffle you've got there," he butted his two cents in on the tailwinds of his laughter, affording True no space to reclaim the conversation. "You're headed to Vancouver then, huh? Far walk."

"Vancouver," True repeated, slowly. They'd been headed west, they knew the Faction had been encroaching into the middle provinces from that coast, but this was the first certain name they'd been given.

"Well, that's—hold on—Eliza!" he bellowed the last part. True winced, casting leery glances at the shadowed ditches. Fortunately, the only malinger was Radio, crouched on the shoulder just outside the circle of light. "The Red Faction works out of Vancouver, doesn't it?"

The fox woman lifted a vacant stare to Linc. Through Linc.

"Vancouver," she confirmed.

"Good girl."

As soon as his eyes were off her, the vacuous neutral expression waxed over Eliza's face hardened. Disgust, hate, hunger. Carved into the deep grooves of a predator's snarl. A chill settled in True's gut.

And Linc was too busy blabbing about her to even notice. "We picked her up in that city, she knows the area darn well, I'd say. She could probably lead you straight to the Faction headquarters, but I'm afraid I can't lend her out."

"You didn't give her any food," True said, the weight of the can in their hands set them on edge. They'd traded that spoon in good faith. Pawning off someone else's food wasn't fair trade, it was sleazy double-dealing, and liable to get both parties stabbed.

"Oh, don't go getting offended on me." Linc flapped his hand, his expression soured but didn't lose all the steeped-in amusement. He leaned towards them conspiratorially. Stage whispered. "Eliza's our very own shadow crawly, she's got a meal right there." He motioned to Radio.

A shadow dweller?

"A meal?" They clacked their teeth down on their tongue before they announced their whereabouts to any other shadow dwellers. But now Linc had finally let a frown settle on that wide jowl of his.

"I'd've thought you'd be more grateful, seeing as we've stopped this shadow crawly from making a meal of you!" Again, that motion to the lump of Radio on the road.

"Radio's not a shadow whatever," True said.

Farmboy cocked an eyebrow, his eyebrows were just barely plural. Much like his brain cells. He lingered on Radio for a long beat, holding his tongue for possibly the first time in his entire life. Another beat, and True began to wonder—hope—if he'd burst an aneurysm right there.

Unfortunately, he moved, words once again bubbling to the infinite fountain of his lips.

"Sure looks like a crawly."

True grunted in response. No matter how on edge Farmboy Linc and the three stooges put them, their body worked against them. Shutting down. Everything smudged around the edges. They were falling out of time with the resonance of the rest of the world.

Whatever Linc said next slid off their brain. Blink hard. They pinched themself. Why was the fox woman taking off her shirt?

No, thank goodness, she stopped with the hem bunched up at her ribs. Firelight reflected off a ragged purple scar that hooked from the bottom of her sternum to her hip. She waved her fingertips down the length of the scar as if presenting it to the crowd.

"To become part of the collective, you must feed the collective." Her fingers fanned from the scar to Radio, who sat like a disused puppet, swaying ever so slightly on moldering strings. "No missing body parts? Not one of us."

"Well go on then, prove it," Linc said.

"Don't be dumb," True cut in. Whoops, they hadn't thought that through, but all eyes were on them now. "Everybody out here is missing a body part." The hiss of their lisp clinging to each s drove their point home. Missing tooth, missing chunk of lip, missing strip of nose. None of which could be mistaken as a sacrifice to 'feed the collective'. There wasn't the meat for it there, for one.

Linc raised his hands, and for a brief instant True, addled, believed it was in mock surrender. But heaven forbid he use an ounce of sense. Instead, he wiggled his fingers.

"All ten fingers, all ten toes."

Well that just felt mean.

At a wave from Linc, the Eliza pushed her outstretched fingers into Radio's bubble, aiming for its face. At last, Radio moved, fast. Rope shreds fell from its wrists. A knife flashed in its fist. It grabbed her and yanked, and with a sharp cry she staggered back, her arm flopping free of its socket. Cal stepped into her place, already swinging. Radio dodged by a sliver, its hand darting to lock around the cat's arm. It turned his own momentum against him, dragging him past the trajectory of his swing into the hard point of its elbow. The impact echoed.

It occurred to True that radio had been very restrained with them. That it was hold back now, too, its knife angled away from Cal.

Lost in the dance of the fight, True missed Linc lumbering to his feet.

Dark metal flinted. The gun. He ate the space separating him from the fight in one stride. Metal met flesh, the hammer clicked a warning that froze Radio in place. By the end of a breath, the Cal had stumbled out of reach, leaking blood onto the warm asphalt, and Linc had manhandled Radio about so the gun pressed to its forehead.

"I told you, prove it." He gripped its jaw, his hand swallowing its chin. Malignancy had bubbled to the surface of his humour. Backlit by the fire, his grin looked more like bared teeth. Radio's knife twitched. He squeezed, distorting the shape of its face. Little bulges of bloodless skin and cheek muscle pushed between his knuckles. With a shake, he rattled its whole body. The knife clattered on the ground.

"You're a damn good fighter, but I'm in charge here. Me. And if I have to strip those ugly ass rags off your scrawny body to get an answer I will. I don't want to. But I will get my answer."

Radio was still still still. Black eyes wide and thin mouth pressed into a grim line. Linc drew back his gun as if to strike.

Froze.

True pressed the muzzle of their gun harder to the sunburned skin of his neck.

"Mine's loaded," they said.

One of those obnoxious jaw-splitting grins spread across Farmboy's thick mug. This was a joke to him. A joke he was in on. Ha-ha, True, using my own dirty trick on me. They could practically see the mirth glittering in his eyes.

Bang!

Recoil sizzled up their arm, shoving it off course. Now they were the puppet, and their strings jerked. Farmboy swore, a single fuck with his whole gut. Swiped at True. They had the presence to sidestep and level the gun at him again. An angry red burn marked a path under his eye where the bullet had skimmed too close. Thin, clear fluid drooled from the patch. In truth, they hadn't meant to hit him at all. But whatever worked.

"Seems I misjudged you." There was no laughter in him. He glared down at True, but they knew he couldn't see them. Not the purple smudged under their eyes, not the waver in their stance, not the tired sag of their shoulders. He wasn't that sharp, and all they were to him was an indescribably ugly face and a pair of ears to hear his great jokes.

Not that they were anything else to anyone else. It was just especially annoying coming from Linc.

"Gonna shoot me again, Trudy? Gonna leave my poor people abandoned out here with the shadow crawlies?"

They didn't grace him with an answer, just waited until those toothpaste-tube-sized fingers released Radio, then clicked the safety on.

They would find somewhere else to sleep tonight.