..

Evacuation

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Although he would never admit it aloud to Mercedes, Puck didn't have a vocabulary versatile enough to describe just how glad he was that he'd run into her. As the rest of the world had fallen into shambles, he'd managed to get out of Los Angeles relatively unscathed (plus he was rather proud of his own street smarts in seeking out the stable in Pasadena to get a horse), but ultimately, this past week had been without a doubt the most terrifying period of his life. Of course, he'd never admit that to Mercedes either. But amidst all the chaos and confusion of the blackout, now that there was a familiar face to travel with everything seemed a little less unmanageable.

Since they'd met up, Puck had let Mercedes ride in the saddle to let her blistered feet have some relief — not to mention give his own ass a rest from being numb. His legs were sore after riding for three days, and it felt good to be walking again, even if now he was traveling much slower. He strode alongside Mercedes and Mr. T (well… Mrs. T, as Mercedes had pointed out, even though it completely killed the badass-ness of the name), guiding the horse along by the reins while Mercedes watched the scenery go by.

"I think I've gone bowlegged," Puck remarked, stretching his knees as he walked.

Mercedes laughed from her perch on Mr. T's back. "Already? After what, three days?"

"Maybe," he chuckled. It had only been a week, but it felt like much, much longer since the last time Puck had felt safe enough to laugh at a joke. It was refreshing to do so again.

"Hold on, pull over," Mercedes said. "I have to pee."

Puck tugged gently on the reins, letting Mr. T come to a standstill before reaching up to give Mercedes a hand down from the saddle. She landed next to him with a slight oof , cringing as she stood again on her blistered soles.

"If I'm not back in five minutes, send a search party," she joked dryly as she limped off the shoulder of the road, disappearing behind a clump of shrubs.

As Puck waited with Mr. T, he watched a small lizard zigzag across the pavement, it's tongue flicking out to scoop up a few ants as it went. A soft breeze rustled through the sparse trees lining the road, and in the distance there was the high-pitched screech of a falcon. A few sparrows twittered nearby.

"Hurry up!" Puck called. He scratched at his shoulder where his sunburned skin was beginning to peel.

"Shut the hell up and let me do my business," Mercedes shouted back.

Puck laughed to himself, patting Mr. T's nose as she nuzzled his chest. "Nice for you to have some girl company, huh?" he said to her. She blew a heavy gust of air out of her nostrils in response, chewing noisily on her bit. "Yeah, I thought so." He reached up and brushed his palm over her neck to give her a scratch, his hand coming away dusty and covered in dirt. He'd have to find something to give Mr. T a good brushing with when they set up camp later.

"Okay, seriously, how long does it take you to pee?" Puck yelled.

There was only silence in response. The falcon called again somewhere overhead.

"Mercedes!" Puck called, frowning. What the hell was taking her so long?

There was then a low rumble reverberating through the air from the west, almost like thunder but with a deeper, lower echo. The earth under Puck's feet shivered, and his gaze snapped upwards as a cloud of birds suddenly took flight from the trees, all screeching and flapping in a frenzy. Mr. T snorted and sidestepped nervously, pawing the ground with her hoof.

"Mercedes!" Puck shouted again, his palms beginning to sweat. "Come on, we need to go!"

There was another roll of thunder from under Puck's feet, and the earth began to shake in earnest, nearly making Puck lose his balance. He barely managed to keep his grip on Mr. T's reins. The mare let out a shrill whinny, her eyes wide enough to see the whites, and Puck desperately tugged on her reins in an attempt to keep her steady. The ground continued to buck and shudder underfoot.

"Puck!" Mercedes was standing over by the bushes, her hands out to the side as she tried not to fall.

"Come on!" Puck bellowed, quickly circling around Mr. T to grab the saddle and hoist himself up. Mercedes began to run towards them, staggering and stumbling this way and that as the ground rolled. Puck reached his hand down for her to grab.

There was a tremendous cracking boom as a tree nearby lost its grip on its roots and crashed into the ground, branches snapping and scattering across the road behind Puck. Mr. T shrieked, rearing up on her hind legs and forcing Puck to lurch forward and wrap his arms around her neck to keep from falling off. The heavy tree trunk rolled downhill and away from them, and the ground roared .

"Puck!" Mercedes lost her balance and landed hard on her side.

"Mercedes!" Puck steadied himself on Mr. T's back, reaching out again. "Come on, get up! Get up!"

"Help me!"

Another tree collided with the earth, groaning as it was ripped out of the soil.

"COME ON!" Puck held his hand out further as Mercedes tried and failed to stand.

There was a terrifying, deafening bellow from underneath the ground, drowning out Mercedes' screams and Puck's shouts. Trees began to drop in a horrific domino effect, collapsing one after the other.

And then the earth wrenched open, tearing apart in a massive rift swallowing trees and rocks and half the road. The pavement cracked beneath Mr. T's hooves and Puck had to scramble to hold on as the horse bolted in a full gallop.

"No, no, no!" Puck cried, grappling for the reins. But no matter how hard he pulled and screamed for his horse to stop, she refused to slow. Puck twisted to look over his shoulder, where the road had disappeared, sucked downwards into the bowels of the earth.

Mercedes had managed to get back on her feet and was racing after him, the dry soil cracking and splitting underfoot. The ground shifted, tilting back into the gaping hole behind her, and in an instant, she was gone.

Puck sat bolt upright, his chest heaving and his skin drenched in a cold sweat. It was dark except for the flickering light of the campfire, and the few embers floating upwards into the night air. Puck coughed, his lungs burned and dry from hyperventilating, and tried to calm himself down with a few deep breaths (only succeeding in making himself cough again).

"Are you okay?"

Puck sighed, avoiding Mercedes' gaze. "Yeah, I'm all right."

"You were mumbling in your sleep," she said flatly. "Something about an earthquake?"

"I'm fine," he insisted, still slightly disoriented. He gave his head a shake. "Just a nightmare."

Mercedes raised an eyebrow at him from her seat on the other side of the fire, but didn't press him further. She was sitting cross-legged, staring into the flames and looking mildly bored.

"Can't you sleep?" he asked, brushing some dirt off of Mr. T's saddle, which Puck was using as a (very uncomfortable) pillow. Mr. T herself was currently tied to a tree behind Mercedes, munching on some blades of grass growing around her hooves.

Mercedes shrugged.

Puck sat up a little straighter, twisting to face the fire and wrap his arms around his knees. Mercedes threw a few more sticks onto the charcoals. They were both quiet for a minute, watching the flames eat away at the new fuel, until Mercedes broke the silence.

"So… where were you?" she asked.

"Huh?"

"When it happened," she clarified, toying with a small piece of kindling between her fingers. "Where were you? What were you doing?"

Puck swallowed. "I was leaving a bar downtown," he said reservedly. "I'd had a couple of beers and I thought the world was ending." He scratched at the back of his neck, not wanting to explain any further, and shifted Mercedes' attention. "What about you?"

"I was on a bus."

"How'd you get home?"

"I walked. I was only a couple blocks away from my apartment."

"Lucky you," Puck said.

The kindling snapped in two in Mercedes' hand. "How did you make it home?" she pressed.

Puck's jaw clenched. He stared at his feet. "I didn't."

DAY 8

All things considered, Rachel supposed she should probably be more bitter about this entire situation than she actually was. After all, if the power hadn't gone out, then right now she would be at rehearsal for Funny Girl, possibly picking up an extra shift at the diner or maybe even doing a photoshoot, rather than trying to figure out how the hell she was supposed to pack for walking across three states on crutches. And yes, okay, technically there were only two states between them and home, but Lima was on the wrong side of Ohio, and Ohio was by no means a small state.

"Why couldn't we have been from Rhode Island?" Rachel grumbled to herself as she hobbled around her curtained-off bedroom, shoving clothes into the backpack she'd borrowed from Kurt. She felt bad for anyone in New York who was originally from Alaska.

"Rachel, hurry up!" Santana shouted from the kitchen. "We're losing daylight!"

"Hey, some of us only have one good foot," Rachel retorted.

That was another thing she should be angrier about. An injury like this would have automatically given her job to the understudy for weeks. Now, though, there was no show for her to even miss out on, and after being stuck in her apartment for more than a week with no sign of life returning to normal she was too frightened to be angry.

Dani stuck her head past Rachel's curtain. "You need help packing?" she offered.

Rachel shook her head as she pushed her thickest sweatshirt into the backpack and zipped it shut. She let out a heavy sigh, her hands squeezing the bag's straps (she was afraid to pick it up).

Dani sidled up beside her. "Are you all right?"

"I feel like I'm going to throw up," Rachel admitted, a rock pressing against the walls of her throat.

"Me too," Dani replied, and Rachel was about ninety-nine percent sure she was only saying so to make Rachel feel better. She patted Rachel's shoulder. "Come on, we need to go."

Rachel released a huff, as if to say screw it, let's just do this and get it over with, and grabbed her crutches from where they were leaning against the foot of her bed. Dani picked up her backpack, already making a beeline for the kitchen where they were piling all the luggage to take with them. Rachel hung back for a moment, casting a dispirited glance over her (cozy, comfortable, decorated, safe) bedroom. It was weird to even think about leaving all her non-essentials behind, but everything had changed and now only the essentials belonged. There was no room for extra baggage.

She reached over to pick up a picture frame from her bureau, of herself and her dads at her eighth birthday party, all with face paint and party hats. There was confetti in their hair and Rachel had gold star stickers covering her cheeks as she gave a sparkly grin to the camera. The photograph was non-essential, but at the thought of leaving it Rachel's stomach gave a painful twist, so she slid it out of the frame and folded it in half, tucking it into the breast pocket of her jacket. It wasn't edible and it wouldn't keep her warm, it wouldn't help her survive — but then again, maybe it would. She refused to look at her empty bedroom a second time, instead limping out of the room and yanking the curtain shut behind her.

In the kitchen, there were backpacks and shoulder bags piled on the table and Dani and Santana were hurriedly tying their hair up to keep it out of the way. Kurt was running yet another check-through of the contents of his backpack, making absolute sure he had every necessity and muttering lists of items to himself as he did so.

Rachel frowned at the table. "There are seven bags."

Santana looked at her askance. "And?"

"And there are four of us."

"We're each carrying two," Dani replied, pulling the drawstring on her tote shut. "You're taking one."

"Benefits of being the cripple," Santana quipped.

It was probably supposed to be a joke, but it only made Rachel feel useless and crappier than she had all morning. "I'm not a cripple," she said.

"Rachel, you're carrying one bag," Kurt insisted, sounding like Rachel was the last thing he had time for. "That's the way we're doing it. Here." He picked up her tightly stuffed backpack and pushed it over her arms.

Rachel only gritted her teeth and struggled to tighten the pack's straps without dropping her crutches.

"Kurt, you've got the stove in your bag, right?" Dani asked.

He nodded, almost absentmindedly as he tried to manage a thousand tiny tasks at once. "Yeah, I got it." He patted his pack anxiously. "Okay, we might be good to go."

Rachel's stomach clenched. This was all abruptly becoming very, very real.

Kurt, Dani, and Santana all heaved their luggage onto their backs and shoulders. Rachel swallowed, fighting back tears as she looked over her shoulder at the rest of the apartment. The living room was still full of their possessions — their movies, their books, their blankets and pillows and chairs — and they were only material things, but Rachel had always been materialistic and it felt wrong to be leaving everything behind. She wanted nothing more than to scream that they couldn't just go, that they needed to stay and wait for everything to get better, but they'd been through that conversation too many times already.

"We ready?" Dani asked, hooking her thumbs into the straps of her backpack.

The group fell silent for a few long seconds, glancing around the apartment that was too empty and not empty enough all at once.

"I think so," Kurt sighed. "Let's go."

As the four of them closed the apartment door with a resounding, final thunk and descended the curving stairwell to the street, Rachel trailed slowly behind, shuffling down the stairs as best she could without jostling her bandaged foot within her shoe. She found the others waiting for her outside the front door and she immediately felt another wave of tears prick her eyes. They'd barely even left the building and they were already waiting for her to catch up.

"Are you ready?" said Kurt. Rachel had lost track of how many times that question had been asked today, but every time she heard it, it sounded a little more like whoever was asking just wanted a reason to stay.

"Yes," Rachel lied.

"We'll go slow," he promised. He stepped off the curb, heading across the street with the girls in tow.

"Aren't you at all nervous about this?" Rachel finally got up the courage to ask, hobbling quickly to keep up.

"Well, yeah," Kurt replied over his shoulder, squinting in the sunlight. "But I'm more nervous about staying, so…" He trailed off.

"Keep your eyes peeled for hyenas," Santana remarked bitterly. (Dani suddenly looked furtively over her shoulder, as if she'd forgotten until now about Kurt and Santana's run-in with the zoo escapees.)

A chill ran over Rachel's skin as she craned her neck to gaze ahead, past Kurt and Santana and Dani, to where the street looked so much longer, so much wider, and so much more treacherous than it ever had before. She shivered, goosebumps erupting over her skin as a warm spring breeze rustled by.

"Crap!" Dani suddenly cried, turning on her toes and racing back down the block to the apartment.

"Whoa, whoa, what are you doing?!" Kurt shouted after her, his voice ricocheting off the buildings and down the deserted street. "Dani!"

"I forgot my watch!" she called, not even slowing down to answer.

Kurt frowned, throwing his arms out to the sides in annoyance as she disappeared back inside. "She forgot her watch," he muttered.

"Shut the hell up, Kurt," Santana snapped. "You late for a job interview or something?"

"No, but I'd like to be in New Jersey by sunset," he retorted, carding through his dirty hair with his fingernails.

Rachel huffed. "I always wanted to avoid New Jersey."

"Didn't we all?" Santana agreed flatly.

Dani reappeared from the door, clutching her watch in her hand and dashing across the road.

"You run like Cary Grant," Kurt remarked as Dani bounded up to them, out of breath and with strands of hair already falling out of place.

She glared at him, panting as she buckled the watch around her wrist. "I'll take that as a compliment," she countered evenly. "Okay, come on. Let's go."

Rachel's palms began to sweat around the handles of her crutches, but she managed to limp along behind them as they walked. The four of them meandered through the streets clogged with abandoned cars, trash, and debris from looted storefronts. And as the wind whistled between the quiet skyscrapers overhead, they headed west.

Blaine grunted slightly as he pushed the no-longer-automatic supermarket door open, gritting his teeth at the harsh scraping sound of the door's ball bearings screeching against each other (it was sitting too crookedly for the bearings to work properly), and then ducked through the gap he'd made. His mother, in jeans and a t-shirt instead of her regular pencil skirts and cardigans for the first time since the blackout, followed suit and wrapped her hand around his upper arm nervously.

"Are you sure there won't be anybody else in here?" she said under her breath. The supermarket was quiet and dark, the shelves almost entirely emptied, and there was an eerie quality to the air inside — almost like a graveyard.

"No," Blaine replied. "But I don't hear anything. I think we're okay for now."

It was odd, Blaine thought, how the moment disaster struck, the first thing to disappear from people's grasp was trust. Everyone was afraid of everyone. He wondered what purpose that could possibly serve for survival.

As Blaine and Pamela walked deeper into the supermarket, the air slowly turned thick and foul. Blaine grimaced and began to breathe through his mouth, which didn't help much and only made his breath taste sour and rotten.

"Ugh, what is that?" Pamela whispered, her hand clamped over her nose.

"I don't know," Blaine replied, gagging. "Come on, let's just get what we need and head back home." This place was beginning to feel less like a graveyard and more like a coffin. It was making him nervous, and he wasn't sure if it was the awful rotting fetor or something else a little less tangible that was causing his stomach to churn.

Unzipping their backpacks, Blaine and Pamela gradually zig-zagged through the aisles. They collected anything on the shelves that hadn't been taken already — a few cans of soup here, a couple boxes of granola bars there, a jug of nearly expired grape juice — and as Blaine dropped the items into his pack he tried not to think about what would happen once everything truly ran out for good. Maybe the power would be back by then.

"Blaine," Pamela hissed to get his attention. She nodded her head toward the rear of the store. "Let's check the back."

Blaine quickly closed his bag and followed her down the aisle toward the dairy section, but slowed as a low, buzzing hum reached his ears. "Hold on, do you hear that?" he whispered, a hand on Pamela's shoulder.

Pamela nodded, swallowing audibly. The hum almost sounded electric, like power lines or an old air conditioner, and for a moment Blaine was hopeful that they'd somehow stumbled onto a tiny pocket of the world where the power hadn't completely vanished. But then they rounded the corner, and Pamela let out a gasp of disgust as a wall of stench slammed into them. The buzzing sound swelling to almost deafening (or maybe it was amplified in Blaine's ears), and he gagged again, fighting the urge to vomit.

Clouding the air surrounding the butcher's counter was the largest swarm of black flies Blaine had ever seen. The butcher's display case was full of rotten cuts of meat — steaks crawling with squirming maggots and filets turned to unhealthy colors and secreting white slime. The flies were so numerous that Blaine could barely see the wall behind them, with the large sign in cheery white letters: FRESH DAILY! To the left of the butcher's, the seafood counter was in even worse condition.

"…I don't think I'll be eating again this week," Pamela said.

"I'm going vegetarian from now on," Blaine agreed, his lip curled. He now felt a very strong need to take a hot shower. "Come on, let's see if we can find anything in the frozen food section."

As they quickly skirted away from the decomposing meats and fish and left the flies to their feast, the hairs on the back of Blaine's neck abruptly stood on end — something was different. He gently gripped his mother's arm, stopping her in her tracks, and held a finger to his lips, listening as best he could. He wasn't sure what exactly made him think they were no longer alone, but his suspicions were confirmed when there was suddenly a loud crash down an aisle a little ways ahead. Pamela flinched, grabbing Blaine's shirtsleeve.

Blaine edged past the next couple of aisles, having absolutely no idea of what he was going to find, and stopped short when he saw what had caused the noise. Behind him, Pamela let out a whispered "Oh my God…"

A young girl was standing in the aisle, dropping items into a shopping cart that was too large for her to be pushing. She couldn't have been older than eleven, a thin wisp of a child with her dirty brown hair pulled back in a sloppily tied braid and a few brightly colored hairpins stuck asymmetrically on her head. The crash had presumably been caused by her accidently pushing her cart into a small cardboard stand for displaying razors and had knocked it over, leaving it keeled on its side with its contents scattered across the floor.

"Um, excuse me—" Blaine started. The moment he opened his mouth to speak, the girl's head whipped up to see him and his mother. Without any hesitation, she abandoned the cart and made a run for it, her sneakers squeaking on the linoleum as she dashed down the aisle and disappeared around the corner. "Hey, wait!" Blaine called, running after her. "We're not going to hurt—"

He skidded to a stop when he saw that the girl wasn't on her own and had run straight back to her partner. Blaine's jaw dropped open.

"…Artie?!"

Artie jumped, gripping the wheels of his chair like he'd been ready to make a run for it too before Blaine had appeared in front of him. "Oh my God, Blaine—"

Blaine didn't wait for Artie to finish his sentence, crossing the last couple of feet between them and leaning down to engulf Artie in a hug. "I'm so glad you're okay," he said once he pulled back.

"You too," Artie said, coughing to clear his throat (he sounded like he was about to cry). "Uh, sorry, this is my sister Caitlin," he added, gesturing to where the girl was standing rigidly behind him, staring warily at Blaine and Pamela.

Blaine gave an awkward wave. "Hi," he said. "Sorry I scared you."

Caitlin didn't reply.

Blaine studied Artie, realizing that the last time he'd seen that haunted look on Artie's face was when they'd been trapped in the choir room, thinking there was a gunman in the school. Artie's eyes were reddened and bloodshot, though Blaine couldn't tell if it was from crying or exhaustion — or both — and there were bruises on his cheek and forehead. His lip had been split (and now that Blaine noticed, there were some nasty-looking bruises on Caitlin's face and arms too). There were streaks of dirt on all of Artie's exposed skin, and his glasses sat crookedly on his nose.

"Where have you been since the blackout?" Artie asked, picking at a scab on his knuckles.

"At home, mostly," Blaine replied, scratching at the back of his head and noticing for what probably the first time how dirty his own hair was. Now that he was in the presence of people other than his parents, he was suddenly self-conscious again. "Just trying to stay safe."

"Same," Artie nodded. He pushed his glasses up on the bridge of his nose, and Blaine saw that Artie's fingertips were shaking. "Um, Caitlin, can you go check the pasta aisle and see if there's anything left there?"

Caitlin gave Artie a questioning look, not moving.

"It's fine, I'll be right here," he assured her.

She pursed her mouth, but did as he said, brushing past Blaine and Pamela and walking away.

As soon as she was out of earshot, Artie spoke. "Has your house been broken into?"

Blaine glanced at his mother in confusion for a second. "No."

"Ours was," Artie said, his fingers nervously tapping on the arm of his chair. "This group of people just… broke our front door down. They ransacked the place. We couldn't stop them."

"Oh my God, Artie, I'm — I'm so sorry—" Blaine said, but Artie cut him off again.

"Caitlin's been having nightmares, and neither of us can sleep. We're not safe at home," he continued, his voice tinged with desperation. "I can't — I can't make Caitlin stay there, but we have nowhere else to go, and—"

Blaine realized what Artie was asking before he said it, and quickly nodded. "There's plenty of room for you at our house. Right, Mom?"

Pamela bit her lip, clearly hesitant about inviting almost-total strangers into her home. "Well, um… how many of you are there?" she asked.

"Just me and Caitlin, nobody else. We don't even have a dog."

Pamela blinked, taken aback by the statement. "Where are your parents?"

Artie swallowed, his jaw twitching for a moment, and Blaine's heart sank. "They're not here."

"Oh," Pamela said. "Then yes, of course, you can come stay with us. You're more than welcome."

Blaine didn't know how he was expecting Artie to react, but he definitely was not expecting Artie to begin crying. Artie took off his glasses to quickly swipe at his eyes with his sleeve.

"Thank you," he said brokenly. "Thank you so much."

It took Kurt and the girls a little more than three hours to walk from Bushwick, cross the East River, and eventually make it to the west shore of Manhattan. There, the four of them stood atop the concrete bank and looked out across the Hudson to New Jersey, all feeling much further from home than they really were.

"I don't suppose there's a ferry running?" Rachel spoke up nervously, more out of breath than the rest of them from limping the entire distance from home on one leg.

"If by ferry you mean rowboat," Dani said dryly, squinting across the quiet, empty waters. "But that's a big maybe."

Kurt turned away from the river, his eyes scanning the road signs within view. "We'll have to take the Holland Tunnel," he said. "Come on, this way."

A flock of seagulls screeched overhead, and Rachel paused, still searching the water for any signs of a boat. "That's two miles underground…" she said quietly.

Santana rolled her eyes. Now was not the time for claustrophobia. "If you want to swim across the Hudson, be our guest," she declared brusquely.

Rachel bit her lip, but turned and limped down from the curb as the group crossed back across West Street, heading for the underground ramp descending into the Holland Tunnel five blocks away. For several minutes, none of them talked; the only sounds were the repeated clunking of Rachel's crutches on the pavement, the seagulls swooping and calling out over the water, and the spring afternoon wind blowing in from the river. But then a shout from behind them made all four of them stop in their tracks.

"Hey!"

All four of them exchanged bewildered glances — they'd passed plenty of people already that day, but every stranger they encountered was nervous and furtive, hyper-aware and suspicious, and absolutely no one had spoken to them. In unison, they turned to see who had shouted, and spotted a police officer half-jogging toward them.

Santana almost wanted to laugh. First sign of government authority since the blackout, and it was one measly cop all on his own who looked like he'd barely graduated from the police academy a week ago.

"Hey!" he shouted again. "Where do you kids think you're going?"

The officer was way too young to be calling them kids.

"…Sorry?" Kurt said, hefting his backpack on his shoulders as the officer stopped in front of them.

"I've been instructed to encourage everyone to stay indoors where it's safe," announced the policeman, resting his hands on his utility belt. "You should head back home and wait for rescue."

"Rescue," Kurt said, his voice and his expression equally flat. "Uh-huh. Sir, it's been a week and there's been absolutely nothing outside except for looters and animals that got out of the zoo. All due respect, but this city is a death trap."

The officer's face faltered for a second, but he took a breath and recited again, "I've been told to encourage you to stay in your homes."

Santana grimaced, fed up with the policeman already. "Told by who?"

"Mayor De Blasio."

"Well, I didn't vote for him," she snapped. "We're leaving."

"Hey!" the officer called as they immediately began walking in the opposite direction. "You need to go home!"

"Or what?" Santana retorted over her shoulder, refusing to even slow down to speak. "You'll tase us? Haul us off in your cop car? Have fun with that."

As the four of them headed to the Holland Tunnel and left the young police officer stunned in his tracks, Santana could have sworn she saw a savage smile cross Kurt's features. Perhaps they'd be okay after all. They were tougher than she'd thought.

The sun was beginning to set as Puck and Mercedes (and Mr. T) rounded a bend in the highway and stopped short as the hills previously blocking their eastward view dropped away, leaving them to stare at a vast expand of brown, empty land stretching out so far they could almost see the curve of the earth on the horizon. The sun was sinking low and blood red behind them, leaving the sky a blaze of oranges and pinks and blues with not a cloud in sight. Mercedes half-expected to see abandoned cow skulls and rolling tumbleweeds like there were in old Warner Brothers cartoons.

"Is that…?" she started.

Puck nodded grimly, letting out a heavy breath as if he was readying himself to jump off a cliff. "Yeah," he said. "The Mojave."