Miguel and I cried together.

We had stopped for the night and Miguel built a fortified city around us. His metal control had gotten better, and he was able to reversibly cannibalize the cart, which gave him a lot of metal to work with. With a crew of 50 that would look like a dangerous crew to most monsters, we figured we weren’t in much danger of attack, so Goro set up some campfires to make the night more pleasant as well.

It turns out that Tom isn’t the only person who’d managed to distill some moonshine, and that Cerberus was rather full of it. Miguel had a bottle or two, and there on the road we had an evening of drinking and mourning. It wasn’t a full velorio. There was no viewing of the corpse. There was no 24 or 48 hours of mourning. But there were memories being shared, and there was enough alcohol flowing to get the feels unlatched.

Miguel and Steve had been a team for two years. With the transition, they’d lost everything they’d had: family, friends, and the buddies they knew from work. Construction workers, and especially the good ones like Miguel that end up traveling to different big cities to built the skyscrapers, are specialists with their own community. They’d see each other a couple times a year, in different cities, as they did their work.

Miguel missed that community. Bubba--Miguel called him a racist fuck--who spewed anti-hispanic insults at Miguel for the first week they met each other. After noticeable amount of tequila, a Tuscon bar parking lot on Saturday, and some bare-knuckle blood that may or may not have fractured some bones, they became friends. It wasn’t that Bubba stopped insulting him...but they started to be friendly insults. It was always “Hey, Frijole,” to which Miguel would reply, “Whassup, Pendejo.” Bubba was gone with the old world.

Steve was the guy the Miguel had found in the new world, three months in, who filled that camaraderie hole in his heart. It’d been Steve and Miguel working together to survive for eighteen months before they found Priya. After that, Steve had been the glue that kept the three of them together. Priya was from Philly, and so was Steve. They knew the same places, and some of the same people; at least they knew some of the same shopkeepers and restaurateurs.

More drink leads to more open conversation. It wasn’t that Miguel didn’t like Priya. She’s orderly and businesslike, and kind in a bossy mother type of way. It’s just that she isn’t his people. They have effectively nothing in common. She’s cute, for sure, but not his type. She’s a steel-belt upper class overeducated type who liked art museums, and Miguel’s a southwestern man of few words who liked beer and monster trucks.

Mostly Miguel just misses Steve. Steve was young, stupid, loyal, and friendly. He was a guy to hang out with, and a good friend: the kind of guy who’d jump up and throw a punch for you, without even understanding what the disagreement was about. We drink some more, laugh a little, and cry a lot.

Miguel starts to get sleepy. I set up my drum kit, prepared to demonstrate to the world that my awesomeness can’t be limited by mere alcohol. Then I fall off my stool, and figure that’s a good place to rest a moment.

I wake up with the sun full in my face, and learn that the plants didn’t add a hangover cure to our bodies or brains. I close my eyes, climb up onto my stool with some effort, find my sticks, and start to warm up. Bad idea. I turn my incoming volume down to five percent, and start to warm up again. I hear some mumbling in the background, and then a bottle hits me in the back. Right. I turned my volume down, but not anyone else’s.

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Adding a sound bubble to prevent outgoing noise, I edge around the pain in my head, getting into a quieter than usual groove. Sunday Morning Coming Down by Kris Kristofferson is an appropriate start for the day. Then Jimmy Buffet and Hangover by Taio Cruz and Flo Rida. Even though it hurts, I’ve taken to singing along with my drums. Hell, if Dave Grohl and Phil Collins can do it, then the best drummer in this whole damn dimension can. Between my voice coach Knopfler, my bat-man hearing, and the practice I’d had over the last couple years, I’m getting better. I’m no Don Henley with my voice, but I’m getting better with the pipes, and I'm still a better drummer.

Forty-five minutes in, my brain has engaged enough to ask if Priya can do anything about the hangover. Why hasn’t anyone invented aspirin in this world. Didn’t someone once tell me something about that and willow bark? Anyhow, Priya: She disapproves of our alcoholic antics rather strongly, but isn’t so unkind as to leave us with the headaches. She makes Mike and I each drink like three gallons of water, because she says dehydration is most of the cause of hangovers. She also soothes the pain with her medical-mancy.

Eventually we get on the road. I sit on the wagon, having drunk and slept my way through thaum regeneration time last night. Two hours of thaum regeneration time is punctuated only by Miguel talking shit about how it’s possible that I’m heavier than the rest of the prisoners put together. Goro gets in on shit-flinging act, and as a giant 4-armed monkey he can fling a lot. Danae mostly giggles at the insults, but it lightens the mood, and even some of the ex-prisoners crack a smile. I don’t know how many of those I’ve seen since I met them.

The long and short of it is that Miguel isn’t coming with Dame Danae and her Minstrel. He’s done with friends dying for a while, and happier as a construction worker than as an crusader. Between bouts of crying last night, he’d also let slip that he was sweet on some young thing he met in town. So it’s me and Danae going out on our own unless we can find someone else in town.

We head back to town, and avoid any more alcoholic antics. There are a few fights along the way, but when we find another swarm of mosquito-bats that Goro calls stirges, the rope is like a bug-zapper, clearing almost the whole swarm in under a minute. When we meet more of the rhinoceros beetles, it turns out that a ten foot tall beetle is just a healthy warm-up for an eight-foot tall four-armed blender. When we find a ten foot tall Cave Bear, Carter spends some time demonstrating why an eagle against a grizzly usually ends with the bear running away. His mace is a bit scarier than a normal eagle’s claws, and the bear never gets a chance to leave.

I’m pretty useless except for my thaum regeneration. I keep grinding on the attempt to recover the time rhythm. It takes a week to get back to town, and I throw eighty hours at the problem. I’m running the polyrhythm in six parts like I did against the zombies, but I don’t succeed in getting it to gel. I get close a couple times: I start to feel time’s river but then it slips away, slippery as an eel.

When we get back to town, things change pretty fast. Priya takes the 37 prisoners back to town, and I realize that I spent a year with them, and didn't even find out anyone's name. I helped to save them, but I never helped them be human again. Miguel heads back to his pad, then to work, and after that to the bar to find his new crush. Goro only comes to town to buy supplies, and then he's off to challenge the gate. I wish him luck, and then he's gone. Carter spends about six hours in town before he says it's been too long since he's been in the air, and he's off again.

In a whirlwind of activity, it's down to Danae and I alone. Let's go free some slaves.