The kid emptied the slop bucket in the bushes, then carried it to the truck and put it inside the camper bolted to its bed. He was so skinny, he had to hold his pants up when he walked. Czarnecki kept the gun on him until he had climbed in on the passenger side of the cab and secured himself to an eyebolt on the floor. We slid in on either side of him, Czarnecki behind the wheel. I leaned against the door, nervous at being so close to the kid. He stunk, and the whites of his eyes were pus yellow and shot through with veins.

“So who are you?” he asked me.

“Nobody,” I replied.

“Nice to meet you, Nobody. I’m Nobody too.”

“Leave the man alone,” Czarnecki said.

“Yessir,” the kid said, meaning Fuck you.

Czarnecki turned on the radio. A sportscaster was cracking jokes about Ali’s fight with that Japanese wrestler. A “Bicentennial Minute” came on, the story of a Revolutionary War battle fought on this very day exactly 200 years ago.

“Don’t let me die listening to this,” the kid groaned. “Put on some music.”

Czarnecki dialed in a country-and-western station and played that the rest of the way to Reno. It was all noise to me. Between my fear of the kid and bracing myself as the old man raced down the mountain, I couldn’t hold a thought in my head. I finally took to reading road signs to have something to focus on.

When we got into town, the kid started looking for rovers. We cruised the streets for hours, from one end of Reno to the other, past the casinos, past the tourist motels, past the flophouses and dives. Every time we spotted a bum blowing his nose or a hooker preening on a corner Czarnecki would bark, “How about that one?” and the kid’s reply was always the same: “Nope.”

Czarnecki grew frustrated.

“If you don’t earn your keep, you’re not worth keeping,” he said.

“I’m all messed up,” the kid said. “I need to feed.”

“You know the deal. Find me a monster first.”

“I can’t see straight.”

“Find me a monster.”

The kid’s chains rattled as he slumped, dejected. We made our third pass down Virginia. I asked Czarnecki if they found rovers every time they went looking.

“I used to get a couple a month,” he said. “Places like Reno draw them, lots of trash for them to feed on. Things have slowed down the last few years, though. I don’t know why. We’ve been out fifteen times in the past sixty days and had no luck. Sometimes I think this asshole is goldbricking.” He slapped the kid on the back of the head. “Are you slow-playing me, boy?”

The kid didn’t reply, just kept staring out the cracked windshield. Czarnecki slapped him again and said, “Better not be.”