Zubair flashed his lights once.
She tapped the brake in acknowledgment without losing speed. Luci's ears pricked to full point now. He rested one paw on her thigh and kept it there like he intended to hold her to the seat if the world tried something stupid.
The crest fell away to a straight ribbon lined with windbreak pines long since gone wild. Shade made strobe across the hood.
Shadows hid potholes big enough to break ankles. She steered around them to the best of her ability and let the truck float across patches where asphalt had melted into tar snakes.
A black-tailed deer watched them from a ditch and didn't run.
Halfway down, a Toyota pickup sat nosed into weeds with both doors open and its bed half full of bags of salt.
Sera gave it a glance, a flick of her wrist, and moved on. The creature did the same, interested in measuring risk, reward, and the clock. They were stocked because she had put the world into jars before it ended and even after.
