Run Further Down The Road

I run because running is the only thing left. Every plan I had died back at the camper. There is no investigation anymore, no careful search for clues, no clever strategy waiting to save me. There is only the desert, the darkness, and the certainty that if Mars and Lizard catch me, whatever happens to me after that will be worse than ****.

My bare feet pound against the cracked pavement while my lungs burn and my heart hammers so hard it feels like it might burst from my chest. Fear strips everything down to its simplest form. Run, breathe, survive. Nothing else matters.

The desert stretches endlessly beneath the moon while my bare feet hammer against the cracked pavement. Every breath burns in my chest. Every muscle screams from exhaustion. Behind me, somewhere in the darkness, Mars and Lizard are still out there.

The image of the dead old man burning alive beside the camper refuses to leave my head. I keep running. The road curves around a rocky hillside and descends into a shallow valley between two ridges. Loose gravel slides beneath my feet while thorny brush claws at my bare legs. The night wind carries the smell of dust and sagebrush across the desert.

Then I see something ahead in the darkness that makes me slow despite every instinct screaming at me to keep running. For several seconds I cannot make sense of what I am looking at. My lungs burn. My heart pounds. Sweat runs into my eyes. Everything beyond a hundred yards has become little more than shapes and shadows.

Then I get closer. The shape begins to resolve itself. What I initially mistook for a hillside is actually a sprawling field of abandoned vehicles covering acres of desert. Rusted pickup trucks sit beside wrecked sedans. Crushed vans rest atop one another in unstable piles. School buses, campers, construction equipment, and twisted heaps of scrap metal stretch across the valley in every direction.

The collection is so vast that I cannot immediately see where it ends. I come to a complete stop. The longer I stare at it, the more wrong it feels. A junkyard implies purpose. Somebody owns it. Somebody works there. Vehicles arrive and eventually leave. This place feels nothing like that.

The cars have not been organized. They have not been processed. They have simply been abandoned. Moonlight glints from shattered windshields and rusted chrome. Doors hang open. Tires have long since collapsed into the dirt. Entire vehicles have been stripped down to hollow shells while others appear almost untouched except for years of neglect.

My eyes move slowly across the collection. Some of these vehicles are ancient. Others are not. A relatively modern SUV sits half buried in sand near the edge of the field. Nearby rests a pickup truck that looks as though it could have been driven here only a few years ago. Farther back, I spot the remains of a travel trailer.

It sends an unpleasant chill through my stomach because it reminds me far too much of my own. That is when the truth begins settling into place. These are not random vehicles. These are casualties. Every car represents somebody who came this way and never left; families, travelers, truckers, campers.

These were people who took a wrong turn onto a forgotten desert road and disappeared. The old gas station suddenly makes a lot more sense. So do Mars and Lizard. I slowly turn in a circle, taking in the sheer size of the place. The junkyard sprawls beneath the moonlight like a graveyard built entirely from stolen lives.

Then I notice the firelight. At first it appears to be a single orange glow beyond the far edge of the junkyard. As I study it more carefully, I realize I am seeing several separate fires flickering against the darkness. The lights cluster together near the base of another rocky ridge perhaps half a mile away.

A settlement. Not a town. A collection of shacks. Even from this distance I can make out crooked roofs, patched walls, and structures assembled from scavenged wood, sheet metal, and whatever else could be dragged out here into the desert. The fires burn between them, casting moving shadows against the rocks.

People are up there. At least I think they are people. I crouch behind the rusted shell of an old pickup truck and study both possibilities. The junkyard offers concealment. There are thousands of places to hide among the wreckage. If Mars and Lizard are still searching for me, disappearing into that maze of rusted vehicles might be my best chance of avoiding them.

Unfortunately, it is also a perfect place to become trapped. The rows of abandoned cars form twisting corridors and blind corners. If somebody knows the terrain and I do not, they could hunt me through that place for hours. My gaze shifts back toward the distant fires.

The shanty town offers the possibility of help. It also offers the possibility that every single person living there is related to the monsters trying to kill me. Neither option feels safe. The desert wind whistles softly through the wreckage around me.

Somewhere deep inside the junkyard, a loose door bangs against twisted metal. The sound echoes across the valley and instantly raises the hairs on the back of my neck. I find myself staring back and forth between the junkyard and the distant fires while my pulse gradually slows. After everything that has happened tonight, I am no longer entirely sure which option is more dangerous.

The fires continue flickering in the distance. The junkyard waits silently beside me. One path leads into darkness. The other leads toward people. And right now I honestly cannot decide which possibility scares me more. Do I hide in the junkyard? Or do I risk the shanty town and hope somebody there is still human?