He glanced at Heron as they walked through the corroded city. Several times during the Isolation War he’d envied her detachment, her ability to let all her pain, both physical and emotional, slide off her like she was changing clothes. She had lived through the worst that war had thrown at them, and the worst times since; she could face any problem they came up against, and could make any decision she needed to survive. Even if all of them died crossing the Badlands, she would live. She would make it home, because that was the mission. She was frightening, even to Samm sometimes, and she was hard to understand and even harder to befriend, but she was the group’s best hope. He would have to talk to her in private and put together a contingency plan.

It took them three days to cross the city, and when they reached the eastern fringe, the Badlands spread out before them as far as the eye could see: flat, featureless, and dead. Here and there a bone-white tree twisted up from the poisoned soil, murdered by the rain and baked brittle by the sun. No longer forced to weave between buildings, they were able to pick up speed, and their first day east of Denver they traveled nearly as far as they had in the first three days combined. Heron took the lead, ranging far ahead to scout out the territory. Phan kept up admirably, not quite as resilient as Samm but still managing to show more endurance than the four Partials still healing from their comas. The horses were the slowest, built not for speed but for distance; they fell behind in the morning, Calix and Dwain staying with them, but then gradually caught up again as night began to fall. The group had been traveling northeast all day, following I-76 as it curved to follow the path of the South Platte River, and Samm couldn’t help but notice that the night air was abnormally cold. Calix caught up to the others along the side of a foul-smelling river. She was shivering.

“We need to camp soon,” said Dwain, accompanying the statement with a silent link message: THIS HUMAN’S NOT DOING WELL.

“It’s cold,” said Phan. “Much colder than usual. We’ll need shelter.”

“We’ll need shelter from more than just cold,” said Heron. “If we’re caught outside when it rains, we’ll be dead in minutes.”

“It’s not going to rain,” said Calix. “I’ve been reading these skies since I was four.”

“Color me unconvinced,” said Heron. “We go forward or we go back; we’re not staying outside.”

Now that he’d stopped walking, Samm felt the chill air creeping through his arms and chest. “Is it supposed to be this cold?”