“What’s that smell?” Reynolds asked.That smell is the stuff they grow mushrooms in.” DeForrest sniffed the air. “Shit?” he asked. Captain Suzie shrugged. “Manure.”

“Say again, over,” he announced. “I was saying that I’m going from here on foot,” Arkeley told them. “You can follow however you choose but this place was never meant for a military parade.” “He’s making fun of your truck,” Caxton told Captain Suzie.”

“Sometimes we call it ‘Extra Chunky,’ too.” “Why’s that?” she finally asked. “Because,” DeForrest said, barely able to contain his mirth, “when you run over a hippy with this thing, extra chunky is about all that’s left.”

“Shit rolls downhill. Bureaucracy rolls faster.”

“Do we have a plan?” she asked.“Yes,” he told her. “Shoot everything that moves.”

“He did not waste time greeting her, but fell upon her at once with a vicious snarl. With his powerful jaws he tore at her, pulled her apart. He ripped open her guts and they spilled with a rank smell across the broken road surface. He tore off her leg and threw it into the darkness like so much poisoned meat.The pain was intense, but she could not complain or fight him off. She lacked the energy to even raise her head. He tore and bit and ripped her apart and she could only experience it passively, as if from some remove.Somehow she knew that he wasn’t killing her.That he was saving her.When he was done, when all the silver was torn out of her body and cast away from her, she breathed a little easier, and then she sank into a fitful sleep. He stood watch over her throughout the night, occasionally howling as the moon rode its arc across the night sky. Occasionally he would lick her face, her ears, to wake her up, to keep her from fading out of existence altogether. Once when he could not wake her he grabbed her by the back of the neck and shook her violently until her eyes cracked open and her tongue leapt from her mouth and she croaked out a whine of outrage.”

“He looked right into her and then he said, “In a second I’m going to ask you if you’re okay. Your answer is extremely important. If you can keep fighting, or at least keep running, you have to say ‘yes’. Otherwise we have to run away and let them win this one. Now. Are you okay?”