Passengers might have helped us make two full groups, but we didn't have any. It hadn’t been too long since we’d dropped off our latest load of hitchhikers at a Shop… and by “load,” I mean a single man. People had been getting steadily less common on the roads. Part of that was probably where we were: a part of the country characterized by expanses of wilderness, occasionally dotted by small towns of a few hundred or few thousand people.

The low population didn’t seem to make the monsters much less dense, although it did impact their rate of reappearance. Sometimes we’d clear out the area before we slept, and wake up to find that the monsters were still gone. It was a sharp contrast to the instant repops we’d had near the airport, and clear evidence of the low population density.

I couldn’t pretend that was the whole explanation for the lack of hitchhikers, though. There were plenty of cars on the road, but those cars were almost invariably empty, or else filled with corpses.

There was water in some places: tiny creeks and ponds, usually accompanied by an equally diminutive town. The big stretches between cities were often dry scrubland, orange dirt interrupted only by the hardiest and most drought-tolerant plants.

The guy we’d dropped off had been something of a badass. Since we’d had no other hitchhikers with us, we’d let him ride in Frank’s cab. He was a forestry guy from Colorado who’d been called down to southern New Mexico to inspect a site for its viability as a solar field. He was supposed to look into the ecological impact or something like that. Anyway, he was a little over 30, in great shape, and came into the apocalypse with all the tools he carried with him for work - including a hard hat, axe, machete, and first aid kit. Critically, he also carried several gallons of water in his truck, and had recognized early that he’d need more. Within the first day, he’d taken a water-creation ability. Between that, his initial supply and his wilderness knowledge, he’d been able to survive until we found him.

In spite of his alien-granted strength and clearly toned physique, he’d been weakened by the experience. Byron and I had to help him into the truck. Even Healing Touch didn’t seem to help much.

“I don’t understand,” John said, glaring at his hand.

“Can’t heal hunger and thirst.” The man cracked a wan smile. “I tried that. Don’t know how much longer I would have lasted. I’d tried to make it to water, but I was moving too slow, trying to be careful about the invisible pancake monsters. I kept getting exhausted before I got out of sight of my truck.”

He wasn’t with us any longer, and we hadn’t found anyone else alive in the cars recently. The five of us were alone out here.

“Do we head back to the last Shop?” Davi asked. “It was only about ten miles behind us, and we know the road is clear. It won’t take long.”

“We could…” I said. “I don’t know that we should, though.”

“Why not?”

Kurt answered before I could. “It said difficulty scales with the number of challengers. Do you want to go into a fight next to people you’re not used to working with? People you maybe can’t trust?”

Davi frowned. “So… what? You want to do a group of two and a group of three?”

I shrugged. “I’d rather go in alone than with a stranger. Honestly, that’s not a terrible idea - me by myself, then the four of you guys. Both groups would have someone who could heal.”

“No one goes by themselves!” Davi snapped. Her fierceness caught everyone’s attention, but she didn’t buckle under our collective gaze. “If the worst happens, I want to know about it. And… at the very least, we’ll know none of us died alone.”

Kurt took a deep breath, then nodded. “Okay. That’s fair. We’re still in a tough spot, though. Vince is our strongest fighter. Me and John are by far the weakest, but we both have ranged damage, which Vince lacks. Davi and Byron can both hold their own. In some ways, it would make the most sense to send Davi and Byron in together, then have John and Vince and me make a trio, but…”

“But then if Byron got injured, no one would be there to heal him, and Davi would have only her slow regeneration to rely on,” I said. “That’s not okay. John and I can’t be in the same group.”

“Well… that makes it simple, then, doesn’t it?” Byron asked. “It’s not ideal, but it is simple. You go with Kurt. Davi and I go with John.”

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I glanced around. No one seemed happy about the suggestion, but no one argued.

“There is one other thing,” I said. I was hesitant to broach the suggestion, to tear open old wounds… but the potential value was too high. “TAF suggested Twinkles might be taking a long time getting back from the challenge because he was gathering information and analyzing the monsters. I’d like to do that.”

“So… you want the rest of us to wait a while for you to return,” Davi said. Her face was blank, unreadable.

I took a deep breath. “Yeah. The bodies of the monsters I killed the first time they whisked me away didn’t disappear. If that happens again, I might even be able to bring some back with us. And I saw the hellbats in there before I saw them out here. It could be a chance to get a sneek peek at future enemies.”

“We were fighting hellbats out here while you were fighting them in there,” said Davi flatly.

I shifted, uncomfortable. “Yeah, but…”

“Fine,” she said, interrupting me. “Fine.”

“We don’t have to. I just think-”

“I said it’s fine, didn’t I?! I just don’t want to talk about it.”

Frank’s cab subsided into an uneasy silence. We’d at least managed to pick up some books before we’d left Walsenburg, so we had more to do than simply wait… but I was pretty sure I’d seen Byron staring at the same page for over five minutes, and I knew his reading speed wasn’t normally that slow.

After an hour - at least according to Byron’s mechanical watch - everyone was antsy.

“I wish there was some way to know how long we had to wait,” Davi said. “I’d love to go fight some monsters, but I don’t know if we need to wait another day or another minute.”

“Sleeping will be a problem,” Byron said. “What if they summon someone who’s asleep? We don’t know if that person will be woken up by it.”

“I guess the safest way for Kurt and I to do it is to nap in shifts, with the one who’s awake holding the other one’s hand.” I grimaced, looking at Kurt. I don’t think I’d held the hand of another man since I’d reached my teenage years. Hell, I hadn’t held anyone’s hand in the past fifteen years except my wife and kids. The idea felt awkwardly intimate.

“Gonna buy me dinner first?” asked Kurt. He smirked at me. “I’ll probably just hold your wrist or ankle if that’s okay.”

“Oh. Yeah.” That was obvious in retrospect.

“I don’t know if that will work for us,” Davi said. “If I’m awake and holding John and Byron, and John gets summoned, would Byron come with us?”

“That is a really good question I don’t have a really good answer for,” I said. “I think it said he would, but I’m honestly not sure about the wording.”

“Me neither. I guess to be safe, we all ought to be touching?” Byron said. “It’s gonna be hard to sleep like that.”

“Maybe we’ll get lucky,” Davi said. “There’s three of us. If it’s random and any of us are grabbed in the first twelve hours or so, we don’t have to worry about it.”

“Wrong,” Byron said. “Someone has to stay awake to make sure we all keep in skin contact, and I don’t want that person exhausted either. If none of us get grabbed in the next four hours or so, I think we should start trying to nap.”

We settled in again, an alien room cooler keeping Frank's cab temperate.

We waited.

I tried to read, but kept getting distracted, looking out the window in spite of there being little to see. After an hour or so, a large herd of wostriches thundered by. Other than that, the only excitement was the sight of some kind of rabbit or jackrabbit. Even with the Mandatory Trial looming, I was tempted to try to catch it.

I bet I’m faster than a rabbit now. I bet it tastes delicious. God, am I sick of the ration bars.

Responsibility won out, and I stayed in the cab, simply watching the rabbit and plotting its demise. If that bunny was still out there when I got back, it was fucked.

Finally, almost three hours after we’d first received the message, John panicked, darting to his feet and lifting Davi and Byron into a hug, Davi’s face mashing against his shirt.

“John!” Her voice was muffled as she shoved herself backward with one arm, the other lifting to let her press fingertips against John’s neck. “Did you get a summons? We need to touch our skin. And, no offense, but I’d prefer not to have my nose so close to your armpit. None of us have showered in weeks.”

“A… summons. Yeah! I did.” He readjusted, shifting his arm from grabbing Davi’s torso to clutching her hand in a white-knuckled grip.”

Kurt twitched beside me, then grabbed my arm. “I got one too! Guess we’re all going at the same time. See you guys later?”

His voice trembled a little, warring between bravado and anxiety.

“If you die…” Davi paused, clearly trying to come up with an appropriate threat. “Vince, if you die, I’m going to find your children and raise them as country music fans.”

“You don’t like country music either,” I said.

“Yes. It will be terrible for all of us,” she said grimly. “So you better make it back.”

I nodded, serious in spite of the ridiculousness. “You be careful too. All of you.”