Tall black spires jutted out from the hills ahead of us like the dead dark trunks of a burned-out forest. A shifting light glimmered at the top of each, stars on the world’s most sinister Christmas trees.
It would have been pretty if it hadn’t been so alien.
If we hadn’t just heard that overly-cheerful voice ringing in our ears.
“Bad timing,” I said. “We’ve been lucky enough to stay out of cities so far, but there’s no real way around Pueblo.”
“They’ll go dormant after they’re claimed,” Twinkles murmured. “That’s what the message said. That’s our window, if we can spot it. I hope they give some sign when they get claimed. Maybe the light will go off?”
“Maybe the whole tower will disappear,” I muttered. “Wouldn’t be the craziest thing we’ve seen.”
Twinkles grunted. “Hah. I can count at least fifteen from here, and there are probably more I can’t see. I hope they’re all dormant by this evening.”
“Monsters, buildings… What’s next?” Avalanche punched the side of the truck, frustrated. Her strike actually dented the trailer, which seemed to take her by surprise. She cast the rest of us a guilty look.
“I definitely didn’t expect buildings,” Kurt said. “I’m not sure why, in retrospect. We already know they gave us the Blueprints for walls, and it’s definitely easier than making living monsters. I just… I guess I thought they’d want to preserve our environment as-is.”
Zephyr snorted, holding up a scaled hand. “I don’t think they’d hesitate to change anything. They’ll change us.”
“They already destroyed all our tech, dude,” Byron elbowed Kurt. “Why would they break the internet but preserve our skylines?”
Kurt barked out a sad, humorless “Hah.” He shook his head. “Wishful thinking on my part, I guess.”
Twinkles clapped his hands, taking charge. “Alright, people! We’re not heading out until dark. Back to the trailer, get some rest. I want at least two people on sentry duty at all times, okay? JoeyT, Bolero, I want you to take notes-”
We let him chivvy us back inside.
In fact, we let Twinkles take the lead from then on. The guy was over a decade younger than me, and not even half of John’s age, but very little of our life experience was relevant when heading into unknown and hostile territory. Sure, Twinkles’ experience came from a game, but it was a hell of a lot better than nothing.
The majority of the Siphons had been claimed, some almost immediately, and others throughout the day. We knew this because our sentries had seen the rainbow lights flicker out, although the tall black spires had remained. Only a few remained active, but their lights were growing more and more visible as twilight fell.
“There might not be a safe time to move,” Twinkles said. “There hasn’t been a siphon claimed in the past two hours, so it’s anyone’s guess if they’ll be claimed overnight or not. Tomorrow morning, some of the first ones claimed will start becoming active again. I think we should try to get across the city now. All of us in the cab, together. I’ll drive. Bolero, you take the passenger seat. Keep your scouts as far out as you can. Vince, you’re standing in between us. Warn us about any people or monsters you see on the road, and help me with any sharp turns. Zephyr, Avalanche, Byron? Stand by for ram duty.”
The first mile or so of our trip, while we were still on the outskirts of town, was predictable. We had to move a few cars, but those were always more dense around cities. The highway was mostly empty of people. There were two groups camped out around semi trucks who eyed us suspiciously as we rolled slowly by, but the other cars were empty.
After we got into the city proper, things changed.
“There haven’t been any rams in a while,” Avalanche said. “There must have been a lot of people on the roads earlier.”
Twinkles sucked in a breath.
“What?” I asked.
“Look at that.” He took a hand off the wheel to point at a car on the side of the road.
For a second, I didn’t see what the big deal was. Then I saw it: the front end of the car was crumpled. It had crashed into something - another car, a wall - and then someone else had moved it here, out of the way, afterward.
It could have crashed - and been moved aside - before the Maffiyir started. Maybe.
I scanned the sides of the road for clues. Pulled-over cars had been a common sight for our entire journey; most drivers will instinctively get off the road when their vehicle starts acting up. Road-shoulder crashes had been frequent too. According to our passengers, many people had been too distracted by their smoking engine to pay attention to their surroundings. In some cases, cars’ brakes had failed to respond, and few of these had been lucky enough to coast to a stop without running into another sidelined vehicle. The road had been a bad place to be.
“There’s another one!” I said. “Up ahead on the right, that brown SUV. Something crashed into its side and was moved away. Someone must have cleared the road here.”
“Well, that’s good news,” John said. “We’ll make better time on a clear road, and people won’t be so astonished by us.”
“Maybe,” Twinkles murmured. “It definitely suggests organization. Bolero, anything interesting from your scouts? You haven’t been updating me.”
“I have to replace them every time they run into a monster, and I can’t take them more than a few hundred yards away! They don’t see any better in the dark than I do, either. I can tell you none of them have been killed by rams, that help?”
“What about people?”
“I’ve seen a few. I’m sure I’ve missed more, because I can only really see them if they’re carrying lights of some kind.”
“You didn’t tell me?!”
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“Well, they weren’t headed toward the highway.”
“Hrmf,” Twinkles grumbled, then sighed. “Tell me about any others, even if they’re not heading toward us. Vince, you got anything?”
“Other than the pavemimics I’ve been calling out? I could make guesses about what buildings are occupied.”
“We can tell that by seeing if they have any ram barricades on their doors. What about Points Siphons?”
“Things get fuzzy the farther away they are, so it’s hard to be sure. I think there was one we already passed that was far off to the right of the road. There might be another up ahead.”
“On the road, or near to it?”
I hesitated. “I’m not even sure it’s a Points Siphon. It could be a cell phone tower or a radio tower. Whatever it is, it’s nearly straight ahead of us.”
“How far?” Twinkles asked, hitting the brakes.
“Not sure about that either. If I knew, I’d have a better idea of what it was.”
Twinkles thumped one fist on the steering wheel. “Damnit. We need vision. I’m taking something to help us scout ahead farther the next chance I get. For now… We need to send out scouts. Real scouts, not just Bolero’s ability.”
“You think we should separate?” Davi asked.
“Not really, but I don’t think we should drive Frank into a bad situation - none of us are great at getting him turned around - and I don’t think we should leave him by himself,” Twinkles said. “Vince, I need you to get close enough to figure out if that’s a Points Siphon or not. If it’s not, we keep going.”
“And if it is?”
“We’ll have to decide. Take Bolero with you and… um…”
“Me,” Davi said. “Force Shield will be good if we get attacked.”
Twinkles nodded. “Good call. Vince, Bolero, and Davi. The rest of us will wait here. I’m going to cover our light sources while we wait. Oh! And throw some of the black thermals from the trailer over your clothes. It’ll make you a little less visible.”
Our trio made good time. I steered us around the pavemimics, and the rams had all been eliminated. We had to deal with a succession of spacedogs, but after days on the road, both Davi and Bolero had four abilities. Any of us could kill the evil rodents in a single hit. The night was cloudy and the moon was only a sliver, but the spacedogs’ warm bodies stood out to me like beacons. My companions only needed to keep tabs on where my attention was, to be looking in the right direction when monsters charged.
We had to get fairly close before I was totally certain of what I was seeing, maybe a thousand feet away. I held out my hand to stop Davi from moving forward.
“That’s definitely a Points Siphon,” I said. “I still can’t see it clearly, but it’s in the middle of the road. Can’t be anything else.”
“Can we get by?” Davi asked.
“I think so,” I said. “There’s some kind of building at the base, but there should be enough space to get around it. We should-”
I stopped speaking, interrupted by a voice in my mind:
You are in Road Crew territory. You are not welcome here. Turn around and leave.
This voice sounded distinctly male and unfriendly, a far cry from the irritatingly enthusiastic voice that had announced the Points Siphon and Maffiyir.
Davi was looking at me curiously, then jumped. “The fuck was that?!”
Seconds later, Bolero was looking around wildly. “I’m guessing you two just heard the same thing as me? Get out of here or else?”
“More or less,” I said. “The voice I heard stopped short of actual threats, just told me we weren’t welcome and that we should leave. I don’t know if they’d be willing to give us safe passage if we were out of their hair afterward. If the oth-”
Bolero shouted over me, shaking his head. “Dumbass! They can see us. Talk to us. You sure they can’t hear us too?”
“If they can, I think it’s fine to let them hear we don’t mean any harm and just want a way through. I don’t think there’s going to be an easy way through this city,” I said, carefully abandoning mention of the others and Frank. Bolero had been right to stop me from saying too much. “Maybe this Road Crew would be willing to negotiate. We might have something they need or want that we could give them in exchange for getting past. Information, supplies.”
A trio of Fire Bolts shot out of the darkness. They didn’t come close to hitting us, splattering against the pavement about a hundred feet away.
No negotiation. Leave, or face the consequences.
Well. That was clear enough.
That interaction set the tone for our entire extended journey through Pueblo.
Areas near any active Points Siphon tended to be war zones, with people willing to shoot anything that moved.
An accidental foray into one such territory left our windshield shattered and three tires popped. John quickly threw the truck into reverse, not bothering to try to turn around. The back corner of the trailer got mangled when he clipped a building on our way out, but none of us cared. We were just grateful the assault on us had stopped when we began retreating.
We didn’t find a garage like we had in Parker, instead relying on camouflage as we slotted ourselves in amidst other trucks pulled up behind a shopping plaza. The plaza was deserted: no one had much need for bridal dresses or office supplies these days, although I took a few minutes to raid the shoe store for new sneakers.
The other trucks could provide us the replacement wheels and tire rims we needed, but the search for jacks strong enough to lift a semi truck took eight hours. Kurt’s ability made swapping the parts out easier than it would have been, but it wasn’t trivial: the weight of a semi truck is no joke. All told, it was nearly twelve hours before we hit the road again with slightly-mismatched tires and a melted pane of clear plastic wedged in to serve as a replacement windshield.
We were careful to steer clear of combat zones after that. Many areas - like the one controlled by the so-called Road Crew - were more passively hostile. Signs on the road, voices in our head, or serious-looking people would warn us to stay back. We didn’t test anyone on their threats, turning around and seeking another route to avoid incident.
A few groups accepted bribes to let us through, but offering those bribes - and admitting we had resources - was a risky proposition. Bolero and Kurtis put on an Oscar-worthy performance when one group threatened us and demanded we hand over all our food and water. We ended up giving them triple what we’d promised after Bolero tearfully convinced them it was all we had.
We didn’t try to bribe anyone after that.
We saw three other vehicles on the road, all sedans that were much smaller than Frank. Each bore the blue glow that accompanied Animate Machinery.
“They probably used the points from a Siphon,” Kurt said. “I can’t see how they’d be strong enough otherwise.”
“That probably explains why so many people have backed off,” I said. “Frank’s not glowing, but abilities change as they level. I bet a lot of people assume we’ve already grabbed a bunch of the Siphons to get someone strong enough to drive him around.”
It all took time - negotiations, repairs, fighting, U-turns, refueling. Not to mention killing monsters and clearing the roads. People had cleared a few, but most were still littered with stopped cars.
We didn’t get through Pueblo that night, or even the next. We slept in shifts, fitfully, constantly shaking each other awake as we got into one tense situation after another. It was miserable, but none of us wanted to stop until we could get somewhere safer.
Finally, as dawn’s rays peeked over the horizon at the end of the second night, we made it out of the eastern side of Pueblo. It wasn’t the south side, like we had hoped, but none of us cared. I’d never been so relieved to see an empty road.