Van finally left the dust cloud of the refugee trail behind. The Express hit smooth asphalt, and his grip on the wheel relaxed—fractionally.

  He passed Caroline his phone. The map showed the interstate symbol coming up fast.

  "Interstate 10," Murphy said, leaning between the seats. "Major artery. Runs parallel to the railroad."

  "There's a town called Lordsburg a few miles west," Caroline added, studying the screen. "South of that, there's a place called Shakespeare Ghost Town. Tourist trap."

  "Hope Lordsburg is clean," Caroline said. "We need to stop. I need to stop."

  Van nodded. The Chevy had taken a beating in the desert heat. Without Murphy's field repairs, they'd be baking in the sand right now.

  He didn't dwell on the image of the M1117 overturning, steel armor peeling like foil. Dwelling got you killed.

  The Express merged onto I-10. Van pushed the speedometer to seventy once Murphy gave the nod.

  Murphy and Caroline huddled over Caroline's phone in the passenger seat, scrolling news feeds.

  "South Korea," Caroline said suddenly. "It's there too."

  Van's eyes snapped to the mirror. "Details."

  "Train footage. One car went red-eye. Passengers bitten, torn apart. Survivors locked the connecting doors."

  Caroline paused the video. "Wait. Hear that?"

  Van's blood turned to ice water. Since the Black Hawk died in a fireball, that sound meant only one thing.

  He checked the rearview mirror, squinting against the sun.

  "Company," he said. "Rotary wing."

  Murphy pressed her face to the glass. An AH-64 Apache hung in the sky behind them, maintaining perfect distance. Not closing. Not leaving.

  "Tracking us," Caroline said. The gunship kept its nose pointed at their back bumper until they hit the Lordsburg city limits. Then it banked hard and vanished north.

  "What the hell was that?" Murphy asked.

  Van didn't answer. He didn't know. Not knowing was worse than fighting.

  Lordsburg's main street looked wrong.

  Residents moved in frantic patterns, clutching grocery bags to their chests, eyes darting to every shadow. The panic from Hurley had leaked ahead of the horde.

  "Supply run," Van said, pulling up to a convenience store. "Canned fruit, vegetables. Five minutes."

  The Express carried mostly condiments, instant noodles, and energy drinks—survivable, but not sustainable. Not for a cross-state haul through Arizona back to California.

  Caroline and Murphy moved without argument. Three days of MREs and instant ramen had left them craving anything with fiber.

  Caroline swiped her credit card at the register while Murphy swept shelves into duffel bags. Two minutes later, Murphy dumped the bags in the cargo bay.

  "Low stock," she reported. "Grabbed what was left."

  Caroline sprinted to the pharmacy next door, returning with a plastic bag of antibiotics and painkillers.

  "Gun store," Caroline said, sliding in. "End of the block. Locals are panic-buying."

  Van drove. The radio spat static between emergency bands.

  The gun shop was chaos—men shouting, glass cases shattered, hands grabbing boxes of hollow-points.

  Caroline and Murphy dove inside.

  Van stayed with the truck, scanning the radio for updates. The frequency squawked to life with an official tone:

  "...repeat, New Mexico is now under full quarantine. All state borders are closed. No entry or exit permitted effective immediately. Violators will be detained by force..."

  Van killed the radio.

  Caroline burst from the shop, backpack bouncing, Murphy trailing with armfuls of black tactical vests.

  "Drive!" Caroline yelled.

  Van floored it. In the mirror, a man in a red flannel shirt shook his fist at their tail lights, face purple with rage.

  "Explanation?" Van asked, taking the on-ramp west.

  Caroline and Murphy exchanged glances. They burst out laughing—hysterical, high-pitched, the sound of pressure valves breaking.

  "We didn't pay," Murphy gasped, clutching the new gear.

  Caroline wiped her eyes. "Chaos inside. People climbing over counters. I saw Flannel Shirt had the right caliber in his bag, so I... liberated it."

  She'd elbowed through the mob, grabbed a dropped backpack from the floor, and raided the man's open satchel while he argued with the clerk. Four boxes of 12-gauge and 5.56mm. Murphy had snatched two radios and a pair of binoculars from another shelf.

  Van looked at Caroline. The rich girl from the ivory tower had just looted a man in broad daylight.

  He nodded. "Good initiative."

  Caroline looked away, cheeks flushing—not from embarrassment, but adrenaline. "I tried to warn them. The locals. Told them the horde was coming."

  "They didn't listen," Van guessed.

  The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

  "Called me crazy. One guy threw a can at me."

  Van shrugged. People denied the storm until the rain drowned them.

  Two hours earlier. Centennial.

  The Lieutenant's Humvee had never arrived in Bayard.

  The sand dune had appeared empty at first. Then the shadows moved—not with the random twitching of rotters, but with purpose.

  The scream came first. A frequency that made teeth ache and bowels loosen.

  Paratroopers hit the dirt, vomiting, hands pressed to ears. The commander looked up from his own puddle of bile and saw it.

  Three meters tall. Elongated limbs corded with iron-gray muscle. No eyes—just smooth skin above a lipless mouth filled with needle teeth.

  Around it stood giants—two-meter brutes with exposed musculature gleaming wet in the sun. Between their legs darted hounds with skulls split open, brain-tissue pulsing like octopus tentacles.

  The Shadow raised one spindly finger.

  The M1117 Guardian opened fire, turret blazing. The brutes didn't flinch. They leaped.

  Ten tons of armored steel disappeared under a wave of bodies. The automatons ripped the roof hatches off with bare hands, silencing the machine guns.

  The Shadow tilted its head back and shrieked again—a command, not a cry.

  Windows shattered along Main Street. From every building, from every cellar, the infected poured forth. Hundreds. Thousands. They didn't attack randomly. They formed ranks, surging north at the Shadow's beckoning gesture.

  The commander died watching hell organize itself.

  The horde crushed his skull, helmet camera and all, beneath ten thousand feet.

  The last image transmitted to command showed the Shadow turning south, toward the interstate, hunting.

  Leaving New Mexico just became theory. Van watched the road ahead, scanning for checkpoints. The quarantine meant borders would be locked, manned by trigger-happy National Guard.

  "Murphy. Remote locations near town?" He tossed the map back.

  Buried under supply bags, Murphy wrestled the map open. "Southwest is all desert. North runs the Gila River."

  Van braked hard to avoid a minivan cutting across lanes. Cargo crashed against the partition behind him.

  He needed space. The upgrade interface had been waiting since Centennial.

  "I'm upgrading the truck," Van said, shoving a fallen crate back. "Size option. Twenty percent."

  Caroline raised an eyebrow, glancing at Murphy.

  Van made the call. Murphy's reputation screen read [TRUSTED]. No more hiding.

  He listed the three options.

  Murphy blinked, wedged between duffel bags. "You're joking."

  Caroline scanned the chaotic cargo bay and nodded. "Do it."

  Murphy tore at her hair. "Stop. Seriously. This isn't funny."

  Van met her eyes in the mirror. "I don't share this with strangers."

  Murphy puffed her cheeks, indignant. "I'm not a—"

  HUM.

  Blue light flooded the cabin. Murphy's jaw dropped.

  Luminescent threads wrapped the Express, weaving into a geometric cocoon. The chassis groaned, metal stretching like warmed taffy. The roof rose. The walls bowed outward. Wheels expanded, rubber hissing as they grew.

  The light died.

  The Chevy had transformed—rounder, bulkier, meaner. The utilitarian box truck now looked like something driven out of a cyberpunk desert nightmare.

  Caroline reached back and pushed Murphy's chin up. "Welcome to the magic show."

  Van didn't wait for the diagnostics. He floored the accelerator, clipping a sedan that tried to merge. The larger Express didn't even shudder.

  Murphy recovered slowly. She reorganized the gear, fitting supplies into the expanded netting and compartments. She found the blue ammunition box, now larger to match the vehicle.

  She held a 5.56mm round to the light. "These are wrong."

  Caroline explained the bonded weapons and the daily resupply mechanic.

  Murphy rotated the cartridge. The blue-tipped bullet gleamed. After watching a truck grow like a mushroom, she accepted the explanation faster than expected.

  "I want to pull one apart." She grabbed two pairs of pliers. "Also, why aren't you farming these?"

  Caroline pulled a standard round from the glovebox. "We tried. Doesn't work."

  Murphy twisted the projectile free, dumping the propellant onto paper. Pale blue grains shimmered. "So the powder just... respawns?"

  "Fresh hundred rounds every twenty-four hours," Caroline confirmed.

  Murphy collected the grains in a plastic vial. "I'm testing the burn rate."

  Caroline ejected a magazine. Murphy thumbed the system rounds in, replacing the standard loads she dumped into a pouch.

  "Free ordnance," Murphy muttered. "And you're not using it. Criminal."

  Van and Caroline exchanged looks. They'd been running for their lives. Optimization hadn't been on the menu.

  The Express cleared Lordsburg's limits, heading north into scrubland. After an hour of empty desert, Van pulled off onto a hillside. They needed to inventory and secure the load.

  Van checked the cans Murphy had grabbed—beans, fruit, twelve tins of mystery meat.

  Caroline laid out the pharmacy haul: antibiotics, multivitamins, rubbing alcohol, nitroglycerin tablets, oral glucose, five EpiPens. Plus gauze rolls, cotton balls, tourniquets, and hemostatic bandages.

  The expanded cargo bay allowed proper organization. Van and Caroline strapped supplies to the walls with cargo nets and zip ties, creating a central aisle to the rear doors.

  Caroline opened the gun store backpack: two boxes of 12-gauge, two boxes of .308, a rangefinder, and two Motorola radios.

  Murphy unpacked tactical vests and desert camo jackets. They suited up, cinching straps.

  Then silence fell.

  Murphy had vanished. Van found her thirty meters away, crouched behind a boulder.

  "Fire?" she asked, not looking up.

  Van tossed her the Zippo. "What are you testing?"

  She'd wrapped the blue grains in tissue paper, twisting the end into a fuse. "Standard combustion analysis."

  "Step back," Caroline called from the truck.

  Murphy lit the paper. "I do this all the time. It's fine—"

  WHOOMPH.

  A blue-white flash erupted, faster than gunpowder, cleaner than magnesium. The concussion slapped dust from the rock.

  Murphy sat down hard. "—the hell?"

  She touched her head. Her fingers came away with singed hair tips. The smell of burnt keratin drifted on the wind.

  "Residual mass," she breathed, crawling to the scorch mark. "Almost zero."

  "Progressive burn in a sealed chamber eliminates residue," Caroline said, frowning. "But this..."

  Murphy jumped up, eyes wild. "We need explosives!"

  Van and Caroline spoke together. "What?"

  Murphy spread her arms wide. "That combustion rate? Contained properly, we're looking shaped charges. Breaching charges!"

  Hunger overrode chemistry. Murphy dragged Caroline back to the truck, cracking open a tin of beef stew.

  Caroline divided the meat into three portions. Murphy inhaled hers instantly. "Cook. Now. Then we build bombs."

  Caroline sat beside Van while he heated water in a camp pot. "I miss proper food."

  Van tore open an instant noodle packet, sprinkling seasoning into the boiling water. "Different circumstances, I'd show you real cooking."

  "You're good?" Caroline asked, tearing spice packets.

  "Every Chinese expat becomes a chef," Van said, dropping in the noodles. "Survival instinct. You adapt or you starve."

  Caroline laughed, the sound carrying across the empty desert. "Our food isn't that bad."

  Van stirred the pot, watching the sunset paint her hair gold. "Not bad. Just not home."

  She pulled her knees to her chest, chin resting on them. "Would we have met? Without this?"

  Van tested a strand of noodle. "I'm a delivery driver. You're... you. Different worlds."

  Caroline bumped his shoulder with hers. "Fate doesn't care about logistics."

  Van didn't answer. He just handed her the pot.