First

Summer Vegetable Vichyssoise and Rainbow Trout Pate on Toasted Baguette

Second

Ancho Chile and Coffee-Braised Beef Short Ribs with Mushrooms

Third

Lemon and Herb-Crusted Rack of Lamb with Mustard Green Salad

Dessert

Assorted Gelato and Biscuits

-South Park Honor Society Awards Banquet Menu by Head Chef Eric Cartman

Dressed in a crisp, black suit like the rest of the hotel serving staff, Kenny snuck up on the busy Head Chef and dunked his pinky finger into the sauce accompanying the short ribs to have a taste for himself. The acidity of the coffee broke down the meat for a melt-in-your-mouth quality, the chile gave the sauce a smoky taste with mild heat, and the mushrooms soaked it all in. "Say, that's good enough to die for!"

Cartman exploded and threw droplets of sweat about as he turned to brandish a knife at his head waiter, "You are going to die for it if you don't get the fuck out of my kitchen and get back to the banquet floor, you finger-licking-white-trash-blonde-haired dandy fuck!"

Kenny gave Eric a pat on the cheek and handed him a glass of water, briefly admiring him in his messy, white uniform and apron. "You need to hydrate and take a deep breath, this isn't Hell's Kitchen. Everything is going really great out there."

Cartman scowled and gulped down the water in a rush, only to seize and cough and thump his fist against his chest, sputtering, "God dammit- juniors! Finish the plating, no inconsistencies!"

The two of them took the back door exit from the kitchen with Cartman still coughing, trying to clear his throat, while Kenny slapped him on the back until it cleared.

"My two weeks are up tonight, Kenny. I feel like I'm cooking the banquet to my own going away party."

One inconvenient truth after another broke wind in Cartman's mind and put a look of disgust on his face.

"All this time, I've been serving Wendy and her asshole friends. And they're kicking me out of town. Don't they know that I could have poisoned them a thousand times over? Why haven't I? Could this be more fucked up?"

"It's not like nothing has changed, right?"

Cartman grabbed Kenny around his waist and pulled them hip to hip with a sigh, "No, I think we've gotten closer. You're coming with me, aren't you?"

"Yeah," Kenny replied easily, resting his cheek on the top of Cartman's head. "Until you piss me off."

"Until you piss meoff, you dildo."

"Speaking of..." Kenny nipped at Cartman's ear and squeezed up handfuls of hips, making Cartman thrash in his grip and derail from his train of thought.

"Kenny, fuck off! I have to make sure they don't botch the lamb, this is crucial!"

"They've got that meat under control. But do you have this meat under control?"

The head chef was pinned to the door as the head waiter groped him with vigor.

"Faa...Fucking swear I'll kick you in the nuts Kenny, not now!"

"You take cooking too seriously," Kenny cooed, making Eric pant out white puffs of air under the night sky. He mentally counted sixty seconds before stopping, using a finger to scoop up the beads of pre-fluid at Eric's tip for a taste.

Cartman practically teared up as Kenny's hand slipped out of his pants. He was still raging hard, thrusting at air in frustration.

Kenny popped his finger out of his mouth and shrugged, "well, back to work."

Leaving Cartman to collect himself, he moved through the kitchen to return to the hotel's banquet hall, scanning the crowd to check on the rest of the wait staff. Butters had joined on with Bradley, and he flagged them down from the other side of the room, power-walking over to them. He noticed that the Second was being served to a line of hungry people who would take a plate and find their way to one of many round tables with white table cloth reserved by name.

"Looking good out here. You two want to grab a drink after work, before Cartman and I leave town?"

Butters and Bradley looked at each other in such a way that made Kenny suspicious.

"Sorry Kenny, but we have plans of our own," Butters volunteered to speak on their combined behalf before turning to ask Bradley, "Could you give me a second with Kenny?"

Butters waited until Bradley was off on his own headed toward the kitchen before speaking up.

"You ought to know I'm real sore about Eric using Bradley as a getaway driver. We had decided we weren't going to be involved. I don't care how Cartman talked him into it, that's just what he does, he talks people into doing stuff they know they ought not to, and I've had it. No more. Understand?"

"Sorry, Butters," Kenny apologized meekly, not one to make excuses, knowing Cartman could do that himself.

"Well, shucks, I'm not that sore, it'd be hypocritical of me, but we've decided to stay out of trouble from now on, and I suggest you and Eric do the same."

"Sure, Butters, thanks."

Suggest all he like, Kenny and Cartman couldn't keep out of trouble if they tried.

"Come back to visit soon," Butters hugged his friend and disengaged to find Bradley.

Kenny did a fresh ocular sweep of the banquet hall before settling on the open bar. Tweek was making coffee and Craig was mixing drinks. Wendy and the rest of the gang were sat at the bar having a laugh, so Kenny made to approach.

Bebe was hanging off of Clyde with a new piece of jewelry on her ring finger, sounding especially loud and lush, "We had just gotten off of It's a Small World,where it funnels you right into the gift shop, and there was this little girl in a princess dress throwing a fit, crying 'daddy, buy my somethiiing' and I just thought it was hysterical, like it doesn't even matter what her daddy buys her but he just has to buy her something. I wanted to make it into my new catchphrase but Wendy didn't think it was very funny."

Wendy sighed and shook her head, "I'm more morally opposed to it than anything, even if it was a little funny."

"Irish coffee," Kenny interrupted, leaning toward Tweek. Everyone in the immediate area save for Tweek gave him the stink-eye.

"Kenny, you should be working. The Second was almost late," Wendy chided.

"Everything is going smoothly, and smooth is fast. What did you think of the second?"

"Very heavy," Wendy said right away , unintentionally cutting off Token from saying, "I loved it!"

"It could have been more complex," Wendy added. "Can you just, go and check on the Third to make sure it's out on time? I have special guests coming; they're late from a flight, they're famished, and one of them is hypoglycemic."

"Yeah, I'll get right on that," Kenny cleared his throat, "later Tweek. Clyde, congrats."

"Thanks, Kenny!"

He could still hear Bebe as he walked away, saying, "Did you have to send the cute one away too? Anyway, let me tell you about Clyde crying through his proposal during the Fantasmic water show, it was the sweetest thing ever..."

Cartman was sporting fresh burns on his knuckles when Kenny found him back in the kitchen., giving up pan duty to fuss with presentation.

"Let me get you some bandages."

"I'm fine!" Cartman shouted and then directed his shouting to the busboys, "Get those moving, pass them down a line, and put them on tables! VIPs first! Then I want every rack of coffee cups we have in this window immediately!"

Kenny retrieved some bandages from the first aid kit and steered Cartman toward the sink to rinse his hands with cool water and treat his burns, fighting him every step of the way like an uncooperative tandem bike partner. He could tell he was being a pest, but he couldn't abide with being ignored. Wendy's cold treatment had really stuck in his craw. "You want to make some trouble once we're done here?"

"That depends on what kind of trouble."

"Up to you."

"Maybe. I'll let you know."

"Can you come out of the kitchen soon?"

"Yeah, I'll be right out."

Kenny left Cartman to fuss and be selectively perfectionist, seeing to the plating of the Third with the rest of the wait staff. The smells of it made him hungry. The lemon and the choice of herbs were strong and brought a lot of lift compared to the Second. He could just imagine the taste of the peppery mustard greens next to it too.

Plate here, plate there, fix the alignment of the silverware, brush crumbs off the tabletops, refill water. The Mayor and her guests got their plates first. Where were those two 'special' guests Wendy mentioned that were showing up fashionably late? He went to check the one VIP table that was still marked reserved and unoccupied. They were from a Greenpeace "Save the Whales" team, but what were their names? He leaned closer to see when a voice overtook his senses.

"Kenny?"

That voice shocked him, as if he'd been camping and heard a grizzly bear outside of his tent.

"Stan?"

Kenny turned around to see Stan and Kyle in matching gray suits, looking at him as if he was the one completely out of place here. He couldn't ask what they were doing there, because he already knew, and he dreaded being asked the same. Being caught out as a waiter, pulling out chairs for his friends receiving grants for ecological preservation, it made him feel small. Some of Cartman's pride must have rubbed off on him, being so concerned with appearances wasn't like him...

"How are you...?"

Stan threw Kenny a merciful softball of a question as he stalled at the plate. Kyle was looking at him much more critically, judging behind a pair of obnoxious Gucci eyeglasses.

"Doing great," Kenny blurted. "And yourself?"

"Good, a little hungry and jet-lagged, but it'll pass."

So ended that thread of small-talk.

Kyle threw out the next question predictably enough, fast and down the middle, "what are you doing here?"

Don't make me say it, Kenny faltered.

He had done nothing more than stay in South Park, spinning his wheels in snowbanks, never wandering far from his grave.

'I'm here to fill up your water goblets and hope your spare change sprinkles on me like so much liquid waste out of your bladder,' is what slithered in the back of his mind, but all that came out of his mouth was, "Oh, well, you see..."

"He's my plus one."

A meaty, bandaged hand clapped onto his shoulder. Cartman had touched down like a bolt of lightning in a black suit of his own to support Kenny.

"And what are you doing here?" Kyle sneered freely now, crossing his arms.

"I'm the head chef," Cartman gestured to himself and then an approaching server with plates, "and here comes the Third. You better dig in before you pass out, Kyle. Mind if we sit with you?"

Kyle was already seating himself as Cartman talked, slouching close to the plate and sniffing it suspiciously, cutting a piece of lamb off the rack to eat.

"It's not bad."

Cartman sat down without a formal return to his invitation, with Stan and Kenny following suit. "How generous of you," the chef scoffed before reading the reserved title on the table aloud, "Save the whales, huh?"

Everyone at the table knew Cartman couldn't care less about most endangered animals despite living like a panda bear, so this thread of conversation did not last long either. Long story short, Stan and Kyle are big on charity work now, regularly meeting with Wendy and Token for travel and work with Greenpeace. They were able to meet up at Disneyland recently after volunteering to help clean an oil slick out at the California coast. Stan kept it to himself, but Clyde had totally ruined his own plan to give Kyle a Disney marriage proposal by doing it before him.

As far as Cartman was concerned, Stan and Kyle were crooks in their own right, all of their charity was balanced out by the smug they trailed wherever they go. They were a part of manufacturing the narrative that global corporate consumption was being fought by hemp tote bags and donating 5% of proceeds to a village in Africa. Maybe Kyle had a niggling feeling while instagramming a duckling freshly cleansed of crude oil that they could do better, but Stan was probably still naive enough to believe in it all.

Kenny scooted his chair closer to Cartman. Kyle raised an eyebrow and put his fork down on the dinner plate he'd quickly picked clean, leaving a set of curved white lamb bones. Stan was still chomping at his, not unlike a dog.

"You and Cartman are...?"

"Moving out of South Park," Kenny answered, with Cartman answering simultaneously, "Moving in together."

Stan asked Kenny, "Do you still have the truck?" and Kyle didn't care for his wistful tone.

"Well, I've done so much work on it, it's like the truck of Theseus."

Stan smiled because he managed to get one of those collegiate-sounding references for once. "Not sticking around to take over your dad's shop?"

"'Not over my cold, dead body' was the end of our last talk about that," Kenny laughed.

Cartman was now equally as irked as Kyle. They weren't supposed to be talking so friendly with each other, this was supposed to be painful and awkward for everyone involved.

"...And Cartman, you're somehow the head chef at this hotel? Shouldn't you be banned from food preparation for life?"

"Hey, if they fired every fry cook that farted on a burger, there'd be no one left."

"You are completely abhorrent," Kyle laughed in spite of himself at Cartman's enduring shamelessness. "How long have you been working here?"

"Oh, just a week or so."

"Did you kill the last chef in charge or something?"

"I made him an offer he couldn't refuse."

"Wow, that Marlin Brando impression is really coming along, they might let you back into NAMBLA at this rate."

After talking awhile, Kyle decided that Cartman was at least tolerable in small doses. If he was with Kenny now then all the better, no need to repeat the events of Kenny's 21st...

When the waiters came around to deliver dessert, Kyle noticed something out of place. "Why is Kenny wearing the same suit as the rest of the waiters?"

"Not all of us can afford custom-tailored suits, Kyle," Cartman retorted with feigned offense.

Kenny gave an overwrought sigh, "The dry cleaners hadn't finished working on my gown either."

Kyle adjusted his glasses, picking for more inconsistencies, "What is Butters doing here?"

"Oh, he's wait staff," Cartman admitted freely, not sparing the same dignity for Butters. "But just for tonight, he's working at Clyde's dad's shoe store mostly."

Kenny explained further, "his boyfriend Bradley helped Cartman get the job here."

"I see Craig at the bar, maybe I should go and say hi..." Stanley offered innocently before Kyle snagged him by the sleeve like a haunted rose bush. "Oh, no you don't."

Kyle wiped his glasses clean quickly and put them back on for a clearer look at the bar.

"Is that Tweek with him? I thought they wanted to kick each other's asses."

"What don't they want to do to each other's asses," Cartman guffaws.

"Shut up, they are not."

"They are too! Kenny and I set them up."

"Why would you do that?"

"It's a long story."

Kenny had one of those 'I-know-something-you-don't-know' smiles on, unable to hide it from Kyle.

"Whatever, I don't give a shit, sounds boring," Kyle lied.

"Kyle, Token waved at me."

"Well, wave back at him, Stan! Honestly!"

"But I think he wants me to go over there."

"I'm coming with you."

Kyle stood up and firmly took Stan's hand for the walk over.

There was a long pause at the table as Cartman and Kenny watched Stan and Kyle. Kenny spoke first as Cartman finished his gelato.

"What do you think?"

Cartman put down his spoon and leaned back into his chair thoughtfully. "Well, I hate their gay little salon haircuts, and they wear too much fucking cologne."

Kenny laughed, "Man, I cannot wait to get your dick into my mouth, that is exactly what I was going to say. Let's get some drinks."

Tweek was beginning to experience something of a sensory overload with the groups that came to huddle around the bar. Craig's friends and Tweek's...Well, he shouldn't call them friends, they just swapped him in for Kenny's absence one year and swapped him back out with a consolation gift package. With all of these people in the same space it seemed inevitable that someone was going to start shit, especially now that most of them were drinking.

Token made eye contact with Tweek and then spoke up., "hey Wendy, we should close the bar down, or at least give Tweek and Craig a break.

Wendy replied with some suspicion, "You just want to go back there yourself, don't you?"

"I think I make a good bartender."

"You want to go behind the bar and start juggling the bottles."

"Well..."

"Go ahead. Craig, Tweek, you're off-duty."

"We're going to take off," Craig started pulling on his jacket as Clyde and Bebe went "aww!" and begged him to stay.

"Goodbye...!" Tweek bid farewell to no one specific, smiling gratefully at Craig, stepping after him with a spring in his step, with shouting voices quickly fading behind them.

"Thank you so much," he sighed.

"I could tell you were grinning and bearing it."

"Sorry."

"You don't have to apologize. I don't want to stick around either. I just want a nice and boring evening in after work."

"Me too."

Back at the bar, Cartman urped after a shot of cinnamon liqueur, "You know they're goin' to the bone zone."

Kyle pulled a thirsty Stan away from the bar, hooked about the arm, announcing, "Hey, I think the mayor is finally getting off her ass to give the grants out, Stan and I better put our feet on the deck for that."

There really wasn't much ceremony behind it; Mayor McDaniels had long grown tired of parading people onto a stage one at a time in awards show fashion. Invite them to a banquet, hand them a check, keep an office aide on hand to take a picture for the paper. Done and done.

Wendy had been quiet, but she'd stopped nervously watching Token juggle bottles, showing off what he learned at that 'Performance Mixology' class. She was chewing the end of a plastic toothpick with a gin martini waiting for her on the bar, looking at Cartman until he looked back. "Can I talk to you really quick in private?"

Cartman looked at Kenny to express 'I'm as lost as you are' as succinctly as he could through eye contact before agreeing and following her back to the bar's half-sized storage room.

She handed him an envelope.

Cartman inspected the contents and found more money than he had been promised for his and Kenny's work at the banquet. "What's this?"

"It's your pay," Wendy answered.

"And the rest?"

Wendy spoke loud and clear on the matter, "to convince you not to work for the mayor anymore. Don't take another job from her."

"Yeah, I'll think about it."

"Cartman," Wendy couldn't stress the point further, "she's going to get you killed. You stopped working for her once before, didn't you?"

"Yeah. Because I don't like being told what to do."

Wendy winced and pinched at her brow feeling another headache coming on. "You have enough, right? Just stop playing, you're playing with your life."

"Too little, too late, Wendy. I can't stop now."

"Yes you can! You can stop-"

"I can't! Wendy!"

Wendy's features slackened, fed up with his pig-headedness. "Forget it. Just go Cartman, get out of my sight. I tried to warn you."

Cartman left the supply room.

Seeing the kinetic way he barreled out of his meeting with Wendy, Kenny put himself in Eric's path, planting a hand on his chest to halt him. "Hey. We should probably think about hitting the road. I can drive."

"What about making some trouble, Kenny? I was just going to ask the mayor to set up something lucrative for us."

"I don't want to go too far out of our way. Getting to our new place is sounding like enough trouble for tonight after all."

An uncomfortable pause before Eric came to terms. "Fine, that's fine."

Cartman was still raring to go. He wanted to get his hands on a lot of money. With just the two of them, they needed connections for the opportunity to make that much. But he didn't want to fight with Kenny. Cartman led the way over to the mayor, biting the inside of his cheek,waiting for her to be disengaged from conversation with anyone.

"Well, McDaniels, this is it, I'm leaving South Park. Are you happy?"

"I'm very happy. You've been nothing but a pain in the ass your entire life. Good work on the banquet, though. At least our business ended on a high note."

"What about our deal? We made plans."

"You made plans. You're not working in this town anymore, and that's about as far as my jurisdiction goes. You're on your own now, kid. It's nothing personal."

Kenny interceded, Cartman looking ready to lash out. "We'll be going now."

The mayor offered, "Kenny, are you certain you don't want to stay?"

"Yeah, I'm leaving with Cartman."

"Well, it's your choice. Goodbye, boys. Drive safely," the mayor reached out to shake their hands and off they went.

Outside the hotel, on the way to Kenny's loaded truck, Cartman unfurled the note the mayor had discreetly passed to him. It had the address for a highway gas station and the following message: "Same as last job. Take product and cash. Metallic-blue SUV, license plate CK-7502. 10K between you two."

Cartman crumpled the note up and left it in a pool of slush beside the truck, climbing in through the passenger-side door.

Dimmed headlights on the road ahead of them, mile markers and peals of snow whizzing by, radio static preferable to the taste of local stations. Everything outside the truck was cold and blue, while everything inside was warm and orange. Leaving town like this was nostalgic, but Cartman was leaving South Park for good this time.

With a brief look away from the road toward his passenger, Kenny noticed two things; Cartman was deep in thought, and there was a bulge around his left pants pocket. Reaching and groping, Kenny asked, "Hey, what's that lump down there?"

"That's our pay," Cartman huffed and scooted closer, flashing the roll of cash.

"That's a fine chunk of change," Kenny whistled. "I'd like to give my share to Karen, can we go visit her tomorrow?"

"It already is tomorrow," Cartman mumbled with an abrupt drowsiness, resting his head on Kenny's shoulder.

"You know what I mean."

"Sure," Cartman yawned, resting his eyes a moment before Kenny intentionally jostled him.

"Hey, don't go to sleep on me, or else I'll go to sleep too. Let's talk."

"About what?"

"Funny seeing Stan and Kyle, huh?"

"Let's talk about something else, I hate those assholes," Cartman groaned and fiddled with the radio until something unoffensive to his taste came along; an 'oldies' channel, which meant the 1980s these days.

"We never really did talk about them," Kenny pointed out. Maybe in passing, but there was a lack of resolution. How should Cartman phrase it?

"Do you want to go to Disneyland?"

"What's that got to do with Stan and Kyle?"

"I don't know, it's like, a metaphor for what they have and we don't."

Kenny thought about it awhile. "I'd love to be able to pay for Karen to go, but I could live without going there myself."

He could imagine Stan and Kyle having a blast there, but he and Cartman would be constantly agitated by the costs, the crowds, and the lines- until they ended up doing something that got them banned for life. Roller coasters didn't do much for him anyway.

Kenny took his right hand off the wheel and hung it over Cartman's shoulder, giving him a tight squeeze against his chest. "You know what? Fuck Disneyland, this is the magic kingdom."

"You're just saying that," Cartman said. Everyone wanted to go to Disneyland.

"You're the one just saying stuff. You want to save the whales too? I thought we didn't give two shits about whales. I'm not gonna be like my dad, pissing and moaning, comparing my life to people with more money than me. I hate it. It's meaningless."

Leaving the mayor's note in slush had been his decision to break away, but he didn't figure that they were done for good. "You want to go clean after all?"

"I don't mind getting up to no good, sometimes," Kenny clarified, "but I'm not doing it for the money."

"You've done plenty for money," Cartman argued.

"For people I care about. It just so happens they always need money."

Cartman had done a lot just for the sake of money. Had used it to measure his worth and others. Risked his life and others for it. Being greedy was one reason why he was called a fatass. Would he be like that until he died?

"You've gone quiet," Kenny observed. "Are you re-evaluating your sinful life up til now? Having some kind of discovery about yourself?"

"Fuck off, I'm taking a nap," Cartman said, closing his eyes defiantly.

The wheels turned round and round, little rocks ricocheted off the fender, and the radio's stream sounded further and further away drifting from one song to the next. The last thing he remembered before falling asleep was Kenny talking to himself, to keep himself awake. What was the last thing he heard him say?

Cartman would think back to that moment in time and wish that he had heard him, to warn him.

The first thing Cartman heard when he woke up was a deafening clap of percussive, reverberating sound and a flash of light outside of the truck. His heart immediately paced into a drumming roll of beats, pumping him full of adrenaline to fight off his fatigue. He'd heard a gunshot. From where?

He was upright in the truck. Kenny wasn't beside him. They were parked outside of Hell's Pass Gas Station with thirty minutes til midnight. He couldn't make out what was going on inside the dusty barred windows obscured by promotional flyers. He found Kenny's loeaded Ruger SR9 in the glovebox, meaning that Kenny hadn't taken it in with him. Someone else had fired a gun. He slid over the seat and flung open the truck's passenger-side door. Parked directly to their right was a metallic-blue SUV. He didn't need to check. License plate CK-7502.

He hugged the wall and looked around the corner through the lower-half of the glass front doors; identifying two men in combative stances, dressed in jeans, jumpers, and ski masks. Cartman braced himself to shoot. He had ten bullets. He hadn't fired Kenny's ruger before. It was a compact 9 millimeter pistol suited to concealed carrying, and it felt small in Cartman's hands. Even with ten yards or less between them he could miss, and this would get ugly fast.

Putting a bullet through the glass sent the first shot wide, and it brought attention immediately; all he could do was keep shooting until his arm recoiled. A bullet had bit through the underfat of his arm, and blood began steeping into the layers of his coat's sleeve. He changed to his off-hand and hazarded a fast peek. More of a juke than an attempt to see anything. No shots came his way so he ducked down and peeked from the ground. The two men he'd seen were down, their blood was flowing over square, white tiles, getting deep in the grout between.

He slowly opened the door, shards of glass falling free from the frame and shattering into smaller pieces against the ground.

"Kenny!" Cartman shouted into the station, looking around with wild eyes. Looking to the right, he could see over the counter- the clerk was dead on the ground, had been for a few minutes- the blood pool under them had settled and the pallor of death in their shocked face was fully cast as a tragic mask.

A third masked man revealed himself, springing up from hiding under the counter. He exchanged shots with Cartman, aiming center mass, before return fire caught him in the eye and dropped his body backwards.

"Kenny...!"

Cartman repeated faintly, clutching about his side where he'd been freshly bit.

"Eric...Help me out of here. I don't want to die next to a toilet again."

Cartman stepped over the bodies to the bathroom, hoisting Kenny from the floor, hissing and shouting with the effort of it, feeling the trickle of blood down his leg. Kenny had been shot too. If it hit a lung he probably wouldn't be talking, but he didn't look good. He aimed around at the ceiling for a camera, but it had already been dismantled at range. So there was an exchange happening here, but why did they stick up the station and shoot civilians?

Helping Kenny into the truck, he shakily reached for the phone in his pocket and passed it off. "Call for help."

"Who would help us?"

"Somebody!" Cartman cried out in exasperation, pained by the defeat he saw, moving to smash and grab from the SUV parked beside them, finding a briefcase left out plainly in the back seat. Next, he took a gas hose, spraying down the station and the SUV before getting in the driver's seat of Kenny's truck. Pulling out onto the road, he rolled down the window, braced his arm on the window, and ran the ruger dry, firing steel-core bullets at the ground. One of them skidded, made a spark, ignited the gas. The truck peeled away with a screech, and an explosion flared in the rear-view window.

Kenny admired it, slumped against Eric, phone against his ear, saying, "Hi Butters, it's me, Kenny. Cartman and I got hurt bad. I guess it was a matter of time, huh? I don't know if we'll make it from here, but we're pulling away from the Hell's Pass station, driving back south. If I die, I guess either this message gets deleted or you forget it ever happened, but Eric and I love you. Bye."

Cartman winced with a grim attempt at a laugh, "Keep that attitude up and we'll die for real...Give me the phone, I'll call Tweek."

No answer. Cartman left a message similar to the one Kenny left, minus the ' I love you', adding, "You need to get us to Dr. Mephesto or we're going to die. No hospital."

Eric hung up and jostled Kenny, who had gone still and quiet. "Kenny...! Why did you stop at that station?"

"I thought I'd fill the tank, for the drive to see Karen, we were running low...Never got to it though. Pretty ironic we got shot by some dickheads rolling over a gas station."

The tank was was running empty. Driving on an empty tank wasn't so far off from what he was feeling inside.

"Don't fall asleep," Cartman pleaded, jostling Kenny again, "Or I'll fall asleep. Talk to me."

"It is shitty that we wouldn't think to call Stan or Kyle, right?"

Cartman teared up, "I told you, I don't want to talk about those assholes! Fuck them! I won't give them another chance to abandon us!"

"I talked big before, but I have pride too. I don't think I could do it."

The car swerved from left to right. Cartman felt woozy.

"Pull over," Kenny said.

The truck's speed petered out, stopping on the side of the road, compacting snow beneath it. Barren fields, a black sky devoid of stars, and cold dust falling from the sky- burying what lay beneath.

"If you think you're going to die, just let it happen," Kenny advised further. "It's traumatic to leave your body. If you resist too much you won't cross over, you could be stuck as a spirit."

"If you think you're going to die, fight it with everything you've got," Cartman pleaded. "If your spirit leaves your body, you know I've got room to spare."

Kenny laughed. "Maybe I've forgotten what it's like, to fear it. I feel so numb to it now."

"You don't feel the pain?"

"I can feel it, but it's nothing new. I can feel how many breaths I have left, before I stop. How about you?"

"I'm not fucking dying," Cartman shook his head in disbelief as the images before him trailed, lagged, and blurred. "One of them will come for us," he asserted, his head lolling down to look at his phone, squinting his eyes at it, straining until he could read the display. "We just lost the signal, that's why they're not calling. They could be on their way right now."

Eric settled back against his seat, tucking Kenny in under the crook of his bloodied arm.

"How many breaths have you got left?"

"Here, let's count."

Kenny twisted and lifted his face to kiss Cartman. He was out of breath when their lips peeled apart.