The echo of the shot caroms and fades. Bob 1 crumples to the ground, blood spurting from a hole in his head. Bob 2 picks up the Seagram’s and guzzles what’s left. He won, but he’s still angry at the other Bob for ruining their partnership. Even if they keep riding together, things will never be the same. The baby stopped crying when the gun went off but bawls again now. Fuck it—it’ll be quiet forever soon enough.

Bob 1’s foot twitches. His mind restarts in stages, like lights going on floor by floor in a skyscraper. He sits up with a groan and touches the crater where the bullet exited his skull, flesh and bone regenerating even as he does so.

“You lose, motherfucker,” are the first words he hears when his ears stop ringing.

“Yeah, yeah,” he replies, relieved to find his tongue works.

The baby is still crying, but softly now. Bob 2 draws his knife. “To the victor go the spoils,” he says, and enters the cabin. A second later he shouts, “Where’s the kid?”

“What do you mean?” Bob 1 says.

“The kid. It’s—” Bob 2 checks the floor of the cabin again. “Where the fuck is it?”

13

13

TWO MOTORCYCLES CIRCLE THE OVERLOOK AND STOP AT THE brink. Jesse worms on his belly for a clear view. The bikes’ engines cough and die, and two bearded men—one tall, one short—step off the Harleys. Jesse’s heart freezes. Rovers. There’s a patch on the back of their jackets, a grinning skull with goat horns. A banner above it proclaims FIENDS, another below HELL. Jesse’s heard stories about the Fiends, rovers who travel in a pack, killing anyone, turned or unturned, who crosses them. Bad news all around.

Johona creeps over to lie beside him.

“Biker trash,” she says.

The shorter Fiend takes a sack out of a saddlebag on his bike, and he and the other start down a path that ends at the bones of a cabin on a ledge below the outlook. Jesse can just make out the crumbling structure from where he and Johona are hiding.

Edgar, back at the boulder they were sitting on, stands to look at the bikers too.

“Rovers!” he says.

“Get down,” Jesse whispers.

It’d be too risky to try to sneak back to where the car is hidden. Better to lie low and wait until the Fiends leave. “We’ll sit tight—” Jesse begins but is interrupted by the piercing cry of an infant in distress.

The Fiends halt on the trail. There’s a baby in the sack they’re carrying. They discuss how to quiet it, and when one threatens to stomp it, Johona gasps. The infant settles, and the bikers continue their descent.

Johona asks what they’re doing with a baby. Jesse says he doesn’t know, but he’s pretty sure he does.

The Fiends reach the cabin and slip from view inside it.