Cinnamon lays her head back. “Feels good to meet new people. Just came from up around Roanoke. Got a whore’s bath. First one I had in while. Out here, it’s good to stay dirty. Build up a good stench. Keeps the predators at bay. Take their focus off your female attributes. Less your sexuality is exposed, the better, until you find someone you can mesh with. And trust me, you will. But being dirty will save your skin.”

Anne and Trot sit back, listening to the steel grind over the track. Anne asks, “How long you think we got before we’re in Alabama?”

“Many factors to that question. Depends on how often we slow down for curves, track switching, if something breaks down. If there’s a shift change, they gotta stop somewhere and let another crew meet them to take over. Hopefully, it’s only a few hours. We can knock off some rest and just chill until then.”

“How do we know when we need to jump off?”

“Trust me, I’ll know. It’s my stomping ground. Just sit back, find your calm place, and enjoy the countryside.”

Leaning her head against the wall of the grainer’s compartment, she feels the metal’s vibration in her skull. Eyes closed, backpack cushioning her spine, she sinks into the soft ebb of the adrenaline. Her limbs feel heavy, weighted. Her entire self is sliding, free-falling, hitting warm water. The calm starts in her toes, traveling up her shins, knees, thighs, through viscera, rib cage, chest, shoulders, and down her arms until all she can see in her mind’s eye is her brother, sprawled facedown on the kitchen floor.

Next thing Anne knows, her neck is aching. Her legs are full of thumbtacks instead of blood, poking around beneath the skin, pricking her marrow. Her limbs have lost the rigid support of bone; they are asleep, hanging from her like heavy vines. Eyelids part, and her blurred view comes to focus on Trot and Cinnamon over her, one arm shaking her to wake up while an index finger to the lips shushes her. Anne reads Cinnamon’s lips. “We all zombied out, missed our jump. We’re in the rail yard. Gotta motor outta here without getting caught.”

Following Cinnamon and Trot out of the circular hole, into the daylight, jumping from the steel porch to the gravel, brutish voices coming loud behind them.

“Hey! Hey, what the fuck do you-all think you’re doing?”

Cinnamon yells, “Run!”

HUNTER

HUNTER

“It’s called collateral,” Hunter tells Itch. Straddling the worn leather seat of his knucklehead. Pressing his crazy locks behind his ears, he straps his flat-black Street & Steel half helmet under his chin. “The shit were you thinking? Shorting a guy you’re selling weed for. You think he’d just let it go?”