7: Alpha Beta Parking Lot

Sleeping in a car moving across this continent is time travel; you're very likely to wake up in another era. That man you just locked eyes with could have been your grandfather. Before the War. This brand and that cut are were not, until today, things you know from experience but from heavy-lidded memories of late nite reruns. You start to wonder how exactly the world twists around you while you sleep. You look at your hands expecting scars and calluses to still be in your future. You get a little paranoid.

18: Sheep Go To Heaven

Chapter 1: Wherein our heroes are stranded

...

Chapter 2: Wherein brambles ruin an excellent pair of pants

...

Chapter 3: The lavender and champagne rescue

...

Chapter 4: Wherein a bond is formed

...

Chapter 5: The contagious dream

...

Chapter 6: Leaving the Lautners

...

Chapter 7: Wherein an option loses its abstract nature

...

36: I Bombed Korea Every Night

"Goddamn man, that's gotta be one hell of a rock with the new sun on all that granite."

It's three in the morning and the sign reads "Keystone City Limits". Suddenly Kadrey remembers a bit of middle school history. He convinces Evan to stick around and see the sun rise on Mount Rushmore.

"No I can't remember where I'm from, and no I don't blame the chemicals, I'd guess that place didn't lend itself to remembering"

They find a picnic table to lay out their black coffee and ground beef tacos. In between four and five they are joined by a young man with way too many stories for his twenty eight years. He has the grace to leave before the silences start filling in the gaps of his autobiography.

"It's settled then."

They spend the morning tallying up at the picnic table. Every dollar, every assist, every rescue, every piece of bread or drop of blood. Things are almost even between them now, but they agree that Kadrey owes Evan a shirt. The button-up kind. With long sleeves.

43: Comanche

This place wasn't always a diner, it was built for something narrow and urgent. The joint is full of moes trying to smother tonight's drunk under eggs and grits and flesh and fat.

There's only one waitress and she is custom built. Pushing fifty with a face that's still waiting for pretty. Straight back, bony hands, calves like a goatfucker. A name tag that reads "Daisy". No shit.

She hasn't stopped moving. Not in an hour and a half. Maybe more. She jerks along efficiently up and down that corridor with the lunging lushes. The floor is coated with grease and spit. Plates piled high with oozing, sliding sick make it from window to table without loosing a molecule. She's good.

There must be miles beneath her soles already, with miles still to come. This table, then the next, then the next, then the next, then the next, then the counter, the whole lenght of it. Endlessly. The show's a bit too ungainly to be mesmerizing. Fascinating though . An hour and a half already. At least.

"Ready to go yet?" asks Kadrey.
"No," says Evan, "not until something breaks."