Outside the windshield, the city of Regina burns at the edges. Smoke curls from overturned cars and shattered storefronts. People mill in confusion and fury, shouting at each other, bartering, begging, or just standing still in shock. Others aren’t so aimless. Some are looting. One guy sprints past me holding a microwave. A fucking microwave. Where’s he even going with that? The power’s been off for days.
I inch forward, weaving around a bus that’s been tipped on its side. It’s already been tagged with spray paint. Someone’s scrawled "NEW GODS RISE" across the metal in bright red. It’s creepy as hell.
It’s slow going and traffic’s fucked every street I try to get out, to get west. Accidents clog the roads, cars left with doorswide open, airbags deployed. More than once, I've scraped my bumper getting over the curbs. Horns blare in frustration. A guy to my left slams a tire iron into someone’s windshield because they wouldn’t move fast enough. I keep my windows up and my eyes forward.
Then there are the ones with powers.
A teenage girl is floating two feet above the pavement, arms stretched wide, eyes rolled back. Her hair streams upward like it’s underwater. The cars ahead of her part slowly, like she’s parting the fucking Red Sea. No one dares get close to her.
Further down, a man levitates pieces of asphalt from the road and sends them hurling into a storefront, glass shattering like rain. People scream and scatter as he laughs like a lunatic.
I tighten my grip on the wheel. This city’s gone feral.
I’ve got 500 kilometers between me and Luna. Five hundred fucking kilometers. And every second I’m stuck crawling in this mess, I imagine her dealing with all of this alone. Except she’s not alone. That’s the one thing keeping me together right now. She’s got the others. Even though I haven’t talked to them in over two years, I know they wouldn’t let anything happen to her.
I shake my head and own it. I didn’t just walk away, I ran. The guilt gnaws at me like rats in my gut. It was me who chose not to respond to all the texts and calls until they stopped. I couldn’t admit to what I had done. But I read every single one until they finally stopped trying to reach me.
I miss them. All of them. Not just Luna, though God knows missing her is a constant ache behind my ribs. I miss Gage’s steady quiet, Julian’s arrogant brilliance, Reid’s loyal charm, and Torrin’s steel spine. We were a pack, a unit, and I fucked that up. I fucked everything up.
Torrin’s last text still haunts me.
*I don’t know what happened between you two
Today I watched her break - again
But this time, it was over you
Don’t ever come back here
Or I’ll kill you myself
I don’t blame him. I deserved it, I still do. But I’m going back anyway. Even if I have to crawl the whole damn way.
The traffic finally starts to thin near the edge of the city. I ease onto a clearer stretch of road, tires humming like they’re finally glad to be free. I push the speed up to seventy, eighty, then ninety. The engine rattles in protest but I don’t let up because I’m finally getting somewhere, until an hour later, I’m not. There’s a bunch of cars and trucks stopped on both sides of the divided highway ahead, and I ease off the gas with a curse and start braking.
Then I see what the problem is and I swear again. Really loudly. A crack, no, a fucking canyon cuts straight across the highway. Jagged and deep like the earth itself split open. We’ve felt a few rumbles, sort of mini earthquakes in the city over the last few days, but nothing big enough to make something like this.
I climb out of the car, legs shaking, and move forward with the other people at the front of the line up and approach the edge. The gap is at least twenty feet wide, dropping down into darkness, and both sides look…scorched by fire. It makes me wonder what might have come out of the rift and that thought has a shiver racing down my spine.
Broken asphalt litters the chasm, along with… fuck. There are cars down there. One looks like a crushed beer can. There’s another one hanging half off of a ledge, its back end tilted up. I look for any movement or sound from the people who must have been inside them but I'm pretty sure they're gone. My heart sinks at the scope of just how many people must have died or been hurt in the last few days since this shit started happening. Jesus, the world will never recover from this.
I stare for a long second, the prairie wind tugging at my clothes, the acrid scent of gasoline and burned rubber thick in the air, and then I turn my back on it. There’s nothing I can do about any of it. I just have to keep my focus on the goal. I jog back to the car, muttering every curse word I know. I throw it into reverse, backtrack, and point the car towards the ditch where there are tracks in the grass that look like there has been traffic recently. I hope that means there is a way by.
No such luck. I barely make it fifty feet before the Cavalier jolts and dips hard. The undercarriage scrapes loud as hell on something and then I’m stuck. I slam the gearshift into reverse and gun it. Nothing. Slam into first and rev it again. My wheels spin, and then the motor starts to stutter, then something snaps, and then there is nothing.
"Mother FUCK!"
I pound the steering wheel with my fist and then drop my forehead against it. My breath comes fast and harsh. I sit there for a minute just breathing, sweat beading down my back.
"Well, Mars, what are you going to do now?" I say to no one. "Get on with it," I answer.
So I do the only thing I can do. I throw the door open, grab my pack from the back seat and sling it over my shoulders. I’m not stopping. Not now. I don’t care if I have to walk every remaining kilometer. I’m going to her, I’m going home. The wide-open prairie doesn’t offer many shadows to help me move any distance so I’ll have to do it the hard way. One step at a time.
I give the Cavalier one last pat on the hood. “Thanks for getting me this far, old girl.”
Then I set off across the field to try and get around the rift in the ground and then turn back west toward home. The fractured moon is huge in the sky across from the sun, and the thought of Luna fuels every step I take.
Chapter 56 - Torrin
