Sasha didn’t have the guts to question him. So she kept quiet for the rest of the ride. So did most of the other passengers. For a long time, the only sounds inside the truck were Rick’s unconscious moans and Roland’s occasional directions to Tule. He led them through under-populated neighborhoods and around checkpoints, past blackened buildings and wrecks of military vehicles destroyed during the Heavenly Kingdom’s first great advance. Sasha was surprised at the emptiness of most of the city. She began to understand why Manny called this place ciudad de muerta.

It took them two hours to escape the city sprawl and finally make their way out onto open plains. They avoided the main highway that linked Dallas to Waco, and instead spider-webbed their way across a series of farm roads. Every few minutes they’d roll past the bones of a rural town. Every town out here seemed abandoned, as dead and dry as the acres of yellow grass that swallowed them up.

A little before dark they rolled over a decrepit bridge across a dry river bed. A bullet-riddled sign identified this area as “Basque County.” Roland put a hand on Tule’s shoulder and pointed toward a big metal barn on the horizon.

“Take us up there. We should probably stop for the night.”

“What?” Tule spoke up. “Why? We could be at Rolling Fuck in an hour.”

Roland shook his head. “We got two routes back to the city. Either we find the main highway and deal with Kingdom patrols or we keep riding these country roads. That’ll take at least another two or three hours, and a lot of time off-road. In the dark. There’s no better recipe for cracking an axle or blowing a tire.”

Tule fumed. But she rolled the truck up and through a gap in what had once been the fence line of a farm. There were a lot of farm houses around them, stretched out across acres and acres of fields and pecan orchards. They all looked abandoned, devoid of light, half-reclaimed by vegetation. The barn Roland led them to was just as empty. There were large holes in the sheet metal roof and chunks of the metal walls had been peeled away for scrap metal. The underlying structure had been built from metal girders though. It seemed solid.

They got out of the truck. Roland helped Tule carry her lover across the last few yards of field and into the old barn. The innards of the building were dusty. Rusted tools hung from the wall and boxes of assorted goods littered the floor. Some of them had been ripped open by scavengers but most looked like they’d sat unmolested since the property had been abandoned.