Maka keeps watch that night as Soul gets some rest, so she naps in the back of the van the next day as he drives them out of Fort Collins.

He drives for hours and hours, maybe five or six. He's only stops to change fuel once, at a random gas station in some nowhere town. It's not worth waking Maka up for, so he gets the fuel done as silently as he can, trying not to disturb her sleep.

It's only a few hours later, when he's on the long stretch road to Salt Lake City, Utah, that he slows the truck to a halt and stares out the window.

The view stretches out for miles and miles before them; sloped piles of jagged white in the distance ascending like towers between grasslands and pine trees.

He takes a second, blinks up at the vista before him.

"Maka," he calls. "Wake up."

She wakes up with a somewhat disgruntled jolt; a moment of panic. "What is it?" she hisses. "Jesus, Soul, you scared the bejesus outta…" she trails off, her moment of anger forgotten as her eyes adjust to the bright sun reflecting off the snowy mountains. "Wow. That is beautiful."

"I know. I woke you up so you could have a look at it."

They stare in awe for a few seconds. "Do you think we could get out for a second?" she asks, and Soul agrees. He grabs the gun from the passenger seat before they exit the car, not that he thinks that they'll encounter any real problems in the middle of nowhere like this.

She gets out first and Soul follows her to the edge of the road tracks where they peer out through squinted eyes.

"Damn," she breathes. "Thanks, Soul."

He doesn't reply but he feels her reach for his hand, so he takes it in his.

"You know, I'm glad we met. And not just… not just because I was lonely. I really… I think I would have liked you, before all this," she waves towards the road; the abandoned SUV.

Soul just shrugs a little awkwardly. "Thanks, Maka."

A few weeks ago, she would have found it rude that he didn't echo her sentiment. Offensive, even. Now… she understands him a little better. She's used to his gruff ways, the total lack of even trying to conform to social normalcy. "Come on. We'd better get on the road."

"I don't want to leave here."

He chuckles. "Well, I could do with a break from driving. We could go on a walk?"

She nods. "I would like that."

They end up walking for over an hour; passing several gorgeous-looking lakes, the endless blue of the sky and the endless bushy green of the forest.

"It doesn't wear off, does it?"

Soul smiles. "I know what you mean."

"I always wanted to take off one day, just go and hike the Appalachian trail. I spent a while living in Maine, so it's not like I couldn't've just jumped on the trail, to Georgia."

"Why didn't you? You said your dad was a survivalist."

"Yeah, he was. He was… he was always away, for work. He always promised that we'd hike it together. I was always so busy studying for my law exams and he was always so busy with work that we never got around to doing it. And now…"

"Yeah," Soul says, negating the need to finish her sentence.

"Maybe you and I could hike it," she suggests, a little shyly.

"We're a few states away from Appalachia," he comments drily. "But I wouldn't rule it out. One of the few things that benefitted from all this is the natural environment." He cocks his head. "And incidentally, one of the few places we'd be more at risk of a bear attack than a zombie one."

"No kidding." Maka grins. "It's like the consumerist zombies all got turned into actual zombies and forgot all about consumerism. Now they want to eat brains."

"Wow, how poetic," Soul rolls his eyes. "Were you into politics, before all this?"

"Oh, my mom was. She was a gung-ho crazy liberal, after she quit the service." Maka smiles, remembering. "All our food growing up was all vegan, all home-grown from her allotment, all wholegrain, the whole lot. The best days were when my dad would take us to a restaurant out of town."

"Us?"

Maka smiles. "I was an only child. I meant 'us' as in, me and my dad."

"Oh, right." Soul nods.

"Were your family at all political?" Maka asks, politeness more than curiosity.

His eyes flicker away. "The same kind of conservative that all wealthy families are."

"Sounds… fun," Maka grimaces. "Did you get along with them?" she asks, remembering a vague garbled sentence once about how his mother hadn't approved of his music, or something similar.

Soul smiles. "Not exactly. I left at 14."

Maka's eyes bulge and her mouth falls open. "What?! Fourteen?!"

"I skipped town and went to school in… in Nevada."

"And you grew up there?"

"I grew up there."

"Was it a boarding school?" she wonders. "How did you afford…?"

"Let's just say it was… more like an academy. For people with… special skills."

Maka's eyes narrow and she stops walking; dead in her tracks. "No."

"What's up?" he frowns, stopping after a few paces, realising that she's no longer next to him. "Why did you stop?"

"Because! You need to tell me what's going on with you, right now. You need to tell me what the hell is up with your past. You just skipped town and went to some random academy at fourteen? Then you were a senior member of the military? What the hell, Soul?"

He swallows and nervously scratches the back of his neck. "Look, it's kind of complicated…"

She scowls and shakes her head. "I need to know."

"Can't we just-"

"No!" she exclaims. "You're lying to me, or something's up. Every time your past gets brought up; you get weird. I've told you everything about myself, everything. Now I'm trusting you with my life, and you won't even be honest with me about this?" her voice sounds hoarse but she's not going to budge on this one, not even an inch.

Soul sighs and his head falls in his hands. "Maka… I… I'm…" he starts, but his head seems to cloud with doubts and he's self-censoring as he's trying to speak. "I had a really weird childhood."

"You don't say!"

"And I'd… rather not talk about aspects of it," he swallows. "But… I will tell you one thing."

"And what's that?" she raises an eyebrow, scepticism mingling with curiosity.

He holds up his hand, the one that just earlier, Maka was noticing the bruises covering. Then, before her eyes, his fingers shift from knobbled, human flesh to something else entirely.

She gasps.