The sky was a bitten peach, sun setting on blood and gold over the highway's empty mile markers.
Victor led them off the vine choked road, under the wide, rotting gnaw of the overpass. Debris scattered everywhere: a car carcass, doors torn open like broken wings; the moss-stuffed rectangle of an old metro sign, the letters faded to bone.
Tommy and the snow team set up a basic perimeter, fingers restless.
The boys horse and otherwise relaxed only as much as Victor's mood allowed, which was barely a hair.
Felicity curled up beside a pillar crusted with old spraypaint, knees nested to chest. She pressed her cheek to her own arm, eyes deadened and damp, watching the twilight swallow up the city they'd left behind.
She did not talk.
The others gave her a wide berth, pretending they didn't see the silent collapse coiled inside her. She'd always been the one to fill the space. Now the air felt thinner for her quiet.
