Roxy was a crazy driver.

She’d never met a hill, snowbank, stream, or boulder that she didn’t love to drive straight over or through. There was no speed too fast, no slope too steep. Often, when he gripped the dashboard and closed his eyes and accepted that death comes to all people, she’d let out a loud whooping cry and then laugh even as the truck bounced or swerved or tilted precariously. At least she had the decency to act embarrassed after such episodes.

“When are you going to let me have a turn?” he asked for the thousandth time. Although he’d grown to love their nightly fireside visits—sitting in peaceful silence or venting about the past—he’d yet to feel likewise about her time “behind the wheel,” as she called it.

“Never, son. And stop asking. This is my truck.”

He’d ask again tomorrow.

They were driving down a long road, cracked and full of holes, straight as the shaft of a rifle. But it was drivable, unlike a lot of the other roads they’d come across. This usually didn’t matter to Roxy, who thought the answer to such things was to drive faster and hope for the best. The Orphan had considered himself one of the bravest people in the world after all the training he’d been through, but his companion on this west-bound journey tested his courage each and every day.

“Could we at least stop and take a piss?” His bladder was like a rain-catch about to burst from weight. “I might throw up, too, just for good measure. It’s a miracle how you can swerve so much on a perfectly straight road.”

“Alright, alright.” She slammed on the brakes and the truck screeched to a stop. His bladder almost gave up but he held it back. He quickly opened the door, jumped out, and did his business only a few feet into the scrub brush, no time for proprieties. Then he took a moment to enjoy the scenery—miles and miles of sparse scrubland and hills and valleys, the faint outline of mountains in the distance, a jagged shadow of gray against the deep blue of the cloudless sky.

He had changed as they’d been driving across the country. As they stopped each night and ate a simple meal cooked on a simple fire. As they’d talked and talked—he more than her, perhaps the most shocking development of all. About the Remnant Nation’s brutal policy of killing, burning any and all those infected. About being orphaned. About being an Orphan. About training, about working, about manning the fortress wall, about killing of his own. And he told her about Kit, the boy he’d saved. Perhaps that had been the actual moment the transformation had begun. Who the hell knew.