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Not much is known about Demons. They primarily exist in the sun baked hell of the Southern US, though they can emerge anywhere that Reptiles, in particular Southern Dragons, have succumbed to the Rabies Virus. It is not known what makes a Demon so difficult to kill despite scale loss.

Seemed like tonight would be one of those nights. One of those nights that you were tired as hell, but just couldn't find any sleep, no matter what you did. I rose up in my bed at right around 1 in the morning, wasn't sure what had stirred me. I listened, to the house and the world around me to try and see if I could hear something. Of course, there was only the creaking of old wood, Nero's snoring and the sounds of the wind blowing sand around outside. The temperature was still right around 70, still comfortable even though I was half naked. I laid back down, pulling the covers up to my chest, starring up at the ceiling, not entirely sure that I would succeed any more. Two weeks ago, I would have said that seeing Texas again was certain as the fall of night, now I wasn't sure. I hated the uncertainty. I hated the idea that I might just be leading my friends to their deaths after everything they had lost getting this far, after everything they'd gone through in the war. I sighed again, quietly pushed aside the covers and slipped out of bed without waking Eirren. I glided across the carpeted floor to the entrance of the garage and quietly slipped inside. The Ford stood as a towering, pitch black mass in the abyss of the old garage. Moonlight was poking in through cracks in the wall and, out here where there wasn't any real insulation on the walls, I could hear the howling wind and scraping sand, incessantly attacking the thin, fried walls of the house, but still unable to enter. It wasn't easy for me to deal with this kind of stress, never had been, probably never will be. There was always that feeling of being backed into a corner and the whole, damned if I do and damned if I don't thought, and I figured I'd fight it in the only way I knew how. I pulled open the rear door of the Ford and dug my ruck out from inside. I kept a bunch of gun parts that I'd acquired over the years, both pre and post war, together in a bag inside of a metal tin. My AR had been in many different configurations since the nukes fell, and since the trip had started, I'd been using the Binary configuration that I'd been using since I found the trigger. But since that set up was...less than optimal truth be told and the DMC role it was currently set up for would be inadequate for dealing with Demons which liked to rush in close, it was time to go back to how it had been in the years before the nukes. The scope came off. The Millspec came out. Both those things went to the side. I dug through the old metal tin till I found my old Trijjicon ACOG and Geissele trigger. They were older parts that had been on my AR right up until I'd found the Binary trigger in some ruins I was digging through. I had switched back to the BSA Reflex because the security team I was on back in Maine required everyone to use the same sight and magnifier mounted in the same place and zeroed to the same distance so if someone died and someone else had to pick up their weapon, they were all the same. I hadn't changed it when I started the trip, don't know why. The Trijicon went back on, the Geissele went back in. I checked to make sure I'd put the Geissele in right and then put my AR, assembled the way it was supposed to be, off to side. I packed up the parts up in the tin and was well into digging stuff out of my pack to reorganize everything when I heard the garage door open. I turned around, Eirren was standing there wrapped in a comforter.

"Hey", She whispered.

"Hey", I said going back to my gear.

"It's like 2 in the morning, what are you doin' awake?", She asked slinking down the stairs and to my side.

"I could ask you the same thing", I said continuing to organize my stuff.

"I'm awake because I got cold, which led me to realize you weren't in bed, with me, like you should be", she said, "you should know me well enough by now to know I catch a chill stupidly easy. And you still haven't answered my question."

I sighed, setting my gear aside, "too much on my brain I guess."

"Like what?", she asked.

"Where do I start?", I asked sarcastically, "Primarily the simple fact that I really have no idea what's waiting for us the further along we go. We're back down in the desert again, which makes water an issue, not just for us, but for the Ford as well. Then I have the small fact that even with a car now we still can only travel for six hours out of the day because it's too hot and the Demons hunt at night. Oh, and did I mention the Demons? Seems like everything I've tried so hard to avoid has just all come crashing down on our heads all at once."

Eirren tilted her head in a way that seemed to gaze into my soul, "that's not what's bothering you. I can tell."

"Oh really?", I asked.

"That kid told you we're headed into Demon country, and now you're wondering if we should turn around and go back the way we came", she stated, "how close am I?"

"Couldn't get any closer than you are", I shrugged, "I'm starting to think going on may not be worth it. It just about takes all of us to kill a single Demon, and you saw how fast the Southern ones are. Imagine if we happen across a Northern Dragon that's fallen to that damn virus, I'm worried we may not be able to out run it. Even with the Ford."

"Well, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't worried about the Demons", Eirren said, "but what the hell happened to "The fact that I'll see Texas again is as certain as the fall of night?"

"It left about the same time I learned that we were walking into Demon turf", I told her.

"Oh barf", she rolled her eyes, "it's not like we aren't packing and have a big ass truck that can do 1500 miles on a tank with a top speed of 200."

"Yeah but at 200 miles an hour in 150 degree heat the engine probably won't last long", I shook my head, "don't say that either."

"Why not?", she asked.

"You wanna give Zack an aneurysm?"

"Oh please. He'd probably just give a speech on how we're both wrong", she yawned, "Arien, we don't have anything to worry about, we'll make it just fine, we always do. Come back to bed, it's too early for this."

"I'd rather stay awake if it's all the same", I told her, "I just need some time to gather myself and figure out how to approach this."

"Yeah? Well those three hours before dawn start in two, and you had better believe I will be asleep for both of them. I can't do that if I'm freezing my tail off. Come back to bed and do your thinking there love, please."

I sighed, "you aren't gonna stop unless I do, are you?"

"Nope", she said without missing a beat.

"Should have figured as much", I said shaking my head. I packed up my things, closed up the Ford and then snuck back inside with Eirren. I crawled into bed next to her and she curled up against me.

"How can you sleep all bunched up?", I asked.

"Only when I'm cold", She said snuggling up next to me, "normally I just sprawl out everywhere."

I snickered, "yeah, I know. Never thought I'd say this, but I'd give anything to wake up tomorrow and have all of this just be a bad dream."

"I'd agree", Eirren said rolling over to face me, "but then I wouldn't have you."

I smiled, "good point."

Eirren snickered, then rolled back over and was asleep within minutes, of course I didn't have the same luxury, there was a reason I'd wanted to make the trip by myself, and now it was rearing it's ugly head as it had the night we'd spent at Hunter's house before driving to the US Border. My team was now at seven members, it was a lot of responsibility that I didn't want, but didn't really have a choice in having.

"We'll make it", I sighed stretching out, "even if we have to gut those fucking things with claws and teeth."

Those two hours went by way to damn fast for my tastes. At 4 AM we were getting dressed in the lightest equipment we had on us and packing away the winter stuff in the Ford while Nat began to brew a pot of some strong smelling coffee. I'd never really cared for coffee all that much, but I'd always fucking hated waking up early with a passion that burned as bright as a million red giants. Pre war I'd gotten up early because of my job, post war it was because if you weren't awake at the ass crack of dawn you were likely to be eaten by something or someone that was.

"This is gonna get fucking old real quickly", Zack yawned as the threw his ruck into the back of the Ford and put his AK in his seat.

"Rotate seats", I said, "it'll keep you from going insane."

"Nat is that coffee ready?", he asked stretching.

"Don't rush me", she yawned, her voice came out in a thick Scottish accent, thicker than what she normally had, "this is the first full night's sleep I've had in two years, okay, I need my caffeine before Imma be doin' anything."

"Should have asked Morgan how bad my Insomnia was while we were trekking across Canada", Benjamin stated, "I didn't sleep literally a second for like six months, and when I finally felt safe enough to rest, I was out for almost 50 hours straight. Morgan said later she had to keep the others from wakin' me up."

"How much of that was Corium and how much of it was Paranoia?", I asked.

"Paranoia all of it", Benjamin laughed, "It was like a drug with a high you never come off of. There was an old Star Wars meme that went around a couple of years ago about Palpatine talking about the story of a Sith lord who was so high on weed that the only thing he became concerned with was losing that high, which, eventually of course he did."

"I remember that, the guys apprentice smoked his whole stash and then stole his sham-wow", I laughed, "Weed memes were the freshest memes."

"My brother was a weed meme", Eirren giggled, "can't count the number of times his super joints got me in trouble. I almost spent the night in jail once because he and his lover were hittin' a bong all night one night and I couldn't get the smell out of my jacket in time for school. So I put a second shirt on and dealt with it. You ever smoked weed Zack?"

"No, but some crazy South Americans were hittin' a hell of a bong during a cease fire while I was in the military. Just the smoke got me so fucked up I couldn't stand."

"I think I'd probably start smoking if I was on the French front too", I shrugged.

"Arctic was worse", Shannon said, "a buddy of mine that got drafted into Delta Force said a bunch of animals on that mission ended up doing hardcore drugs afterwords."

"I remember hearing about that", I said sitting next to the fire Nat was cooking over, "they were puttin' animals in weird places from drafts because just about every program and project the military had needed bodies to occupy triggers. What about you Ben? You got any drug related memories of pre war while we're on the subject?"

Nat handed me a cup of coffee. I didn't normally drink coffee, couldn't stand the bitter taste, or the smell really for that matter, but she'd added powdered milk, creamer and some chocolate flavor, creating this flavor that was like half way between coffee and hot coco that was made with milk instead of water, smelled pretty good, tasted even better.

"Well, two actually, that kinda merge into one. When I took that 8mm round to the face it blew off half my skull. I just remember flying off the tank, not feeling a lot of anything and then getting into a savage fight with some Chinese soldiers that were hiding in the sand. Once the AO was clear, Staff Sargent Trevor turns at me and goes, "umm..private, are you aware that half of your skull is missing?" My response was basically to pause for a moment and ask him to repeat himself, he did, so I being an idiot touched the side of my head and learned that day that my brain felt oddly like clay."

"Holy fuck", Eirren whistled.

"Next thing I knew I was in a hospital bed, numb everywhere. Turned out they'd stuck my head back together with one of those 3d Printers and put me on something called T-5. The hardest of hardcore painkillers on the planet. Non addictive, but man did this shit just shut your ass down. While I was on it, I was immobile. Couldn't blink, couldn't move my mouth, legs, tail, arms, fucking nothing worked. I found out later that it's a synthesized paralytic agent designed to render the patient completely numb."

"I would have killed for that for about a month after Medusa", Nat said, "not so much any more, given that everything has healed up quite nicely, I mean for me basically being a living stick of radioactive material."

"Heh", I snickered, "should have met by buddy Luke."

"Luke?", Eirren asked.

"Buddy of mine Pre-War", I said, "grey wolf, sweetest back hills kid you'd ever meet. He had a stripe in him for old guns and army gear, and he was an ice cube, but that's why I liked him. Couple of years ago I got a call and got told he was in the hospital, but didn't get much explanation. He had me worried sick for a few weeks until he sent me a message on Facebook telling me he was still alive. So I sat the fuck down and picked his head for answers."

'So what happened?", Nat asked.

"4thdegree thermal burns to 97% of his body, the other 3% was 5th. He'd gotten into an accident with a drunk driver, and something in the way the guys bus hit him punched the driveline through the fuel tank of his truck. He told me he woke up covered in diesel fuel and that as soon as he saw the spark from the dome light he knew exactly what was about to happen. Probably only lasted two and a half, three minutes, but if you tell him that, he'd laugh at you and say three hours was more accurate."

"Brutal", Nat said, "I wasn't on fire but 20 seconds."

"He told me he didn't even scream, all he could do was gag as he watched his fur and flesh literally melt off his bones. After 30 seconds, said he couldn't feel it any more, but he was still awake, never actually passed out during the whole ordeal he tells me."

"Damn", Eirren sighed.

"Now he's confined to heavy life support suit", I said, "I can't really describe it well because I don't have anything to compare it to, but it keeps him in a sterilized environment, helps his burns to stay clean and let's him live a somewhat normal life. But, he'll never come back from it."

"I came back from Medusa", Nat said, "ground zero of a Corium bomb was a lot hotter than a diesel fire. Plus, hes a wolf, I'm just a pit bull."

"This is different Nat", I shrugged, "something from the fire shot out his ability to heal, so even now, assuming he's still kicking around, his burns are as fresh and raw as they were when EMS put the fire out. Last I knew he was on a constant painkiller drip because it was so bad."

Nat shivered as we began to pack up the last of the base and load up the Ford.

"You know, I've been through a lot of shit these past few years, but the one thing I can't forget is the burns", she said, "not just the pain, but the itching, cold and numbness, all at the same time, and the way it peeled and snagged on my suit for the longest time. Even to this day the gash across my back and chest still snags on the fabric from time to time, the unholy pain."

I saw Shannon look down at her boots and rub the palm of her left hand with her thumb. She muttered something I couldn't make out and sighed heavily, but quietly enough that none of us could really notice as she picked up her carbine and ruck. She threw it into the back of the Ford as we all piled in. Zack, seeming to take notice of Shannon's discomfort, spoke up.

"You okay Shannon?", he asked, "someone salt an old wound?"

Shannon tried to play it off, "no. what makes you think that?"

"It's not hard to tell all the talk of burns is bothering you", Zack said, "something to do with the bombs?"

"Sort of...", She zoned out for a moment, "When you work as a vet in an Emergency room you see a lot of shit but, some of the animals that came in from ground zero were corpses that didn't realize they were dead with how badly they were burnt. I'll never forget that little fox girl, she was just about a skeleton, crying to her mother and begging me to make the hurting stop. Who do you think actually won?"

I shook my head and was going to say nobody, like I always did, but Zack had a more...fitting answer.

He sighed, "everyone who died when the nukes fell on their heads."

The Ford fell quiet, even though I'd started the engine. Ben opened the garage door and joined us back inside. With everyone locked and loaded, I took a sip of my coffee and started the Ford out of garage, turning onto the old road with a creak from the suspension. The Ford left a thick dust cloud in it's wake and, with the clarity of the sky and bright blue glow of the moon, we had a view of the wasteland for miles around. It wasn't like the dead woods and decrepit cities of Rabid Country. Here, it was high desert. Just a rolling plain of endless sand and burned houses, but it wasn't like it was in Canada, where the highways were littered with rusted cars, bleached bones and evidence of other animals scurrying about in the early hours looking for whatever they'd need to survive the heat of the day. Here, the desert was empty, devoid of any evidence that life had ever existed except for old houses that were on the verge of falling over. Even the asphalt, lit by the Ford's headlights, was washed almost white and in some places it was difficult to even see the road on account of all of the sand that had been flung over it by the wind. I relied heavily on Eirren calling out directions and telling me exactly where to go, and at times our pace was slowed to a crawl because I couldn't see the road. In the three hours before dawn, we didn't end up getting very far, maybe went about a hundred miles before the sun started to come up, and with it, there was an instant spike in the temperature, from 69 all the way to 76.

"Temperature just spiked about 7 degrees", Eirren said looking at the slowly rising sun from the passenger's seat.

"If it rises that much just by the sun beginning to peek over the horizon, who knows how hot it'll end up getting", Nat said.

"Yeah. My thoughts exactly, but we can't exactly stop here without shelter", I said, "there isn't a building in sight."

So I kept on driving. As the time passed and the sun rose higher and higher into the sky, so too did ambient temperature. At about 8 in the morning, the familiar blinding white light had set in over the desert and the temperature was nearing 140 degrees. The water temperature gauge in the instrument cluster was nearing every closer to the red zone. By ten after eight, I saw the first wisps of smoke from underneath the hood, and there still wasn't a building in sight.

"Fuck", I growled, pulling off the road and slowing the Ford to a stop. The steam rising from underneath the hood wasn't large, but it was just enough to notice "we over heated, can't go much further now. Zack, you're the diesel expert, what the hell do we do now?"

Zack thought for a moment, "well...given the fact that we're turbocharged, we could have a warped intercooler, radiator might be leaking, or we might just have a clog somewhere that needs to be flushed out. I'll check the water level and give the cooling system a look over, but sometimes overheating is just that. It got to hot and needs to cool down. Let it idle for a minute or two and cool off a bit, then I'll take a look at it and see if anything's screwed up on us."

"Well either way we're not going anywhere till the temperature is back under a hundred", I said undoing my harness, "so let's get dug in here and see what we can do to beat the heat."

"First thing we need to do is dig out space under the truck for us to lay in", Shannon said, "the shade alone will be a big help."

"I took a few battery operated fans from the Walmart too", Nat said, "long as we move air it should be somewhat more manageable."

"Let's get to it then", I said shutting off the Ford. Opening the door, instantly being assaulted by a blast of furnace like air from the outside. Ben, the girls and myself started digging out space under the truck for shade while Zack began to look at the cooling system. We dug out a hole that extended about 4 feet from the left side of the truck that was 2 or three feet deep. Big enough for us to sit in, but not so deep I wouldn't be able to get the truck out when it came time to bug out. We pushed some of the spare dirt up along the sides, front and rear of the truck to keep the sun light out and hung Eirren's portable fans, all four of them, from the drive lines to the front and rear wheels, taking care to avoid burning ourselves on the Ford's exhaust pipe. We spread out some of the blankets from the store on the sandy ground and hung a tarp over the spot that extended into the sunlight, after that, there was nothing to do but wait.

"Now we wait for the temperature to drop below a hundred", I said staring out over the desert. The horizon was distorted by heat mirage, appearing as if I was looking into a glass bowl filled with moving water. I'd seen it a lot since the bombs fell, but nothing quite this bad. It was surreal to look at, quite unnerving. As the time passed, the sun climbed high in the sky, with it, so did the thermometer. By noon, it was well over 130 degrees outside, and though the heat wasn't bothering myself terribly badly, the rest of my friends were a different story. Zack had stopped working on the truck and taken cover, having developed a reddish tint to his normal blue, Benjamin and Nat were panting heavily, but Shannon was a different story. All of her fur was matted down with sweat, her eyes were beginning to change from their normal color to a dark brown and her pupils were dilating, revealing copper colored threads. She insisted to us time and time again that she was fine, but soon it became obvious to us she had an entirely different problem than just overheating. I'd seen it somewhere before, but couldn't remember where. It took ten minutes, and Shannon finally passing out before I realized what exactly was going on.

"Heatstroke!", I said, "someone catch her!"

Nat caught Shannon and kept her from slumping over since they were right next to each other. I scrambled out from underneath the truck and into the extension where Zack had been spending most of his time and laid her down so she was level.

"Zack will the Ford run right now?", I asked.

"Yes but in this heat it'll overheat in about 20 seconds", Zack said, he was gonna ad something else, but Benjamin butted in.

"At the stage she's in, it's too late for the AC to be of any help anyway", he said, "we'll have to get her temperature down some other way."

"How?", I asked.

"Soak some rags and tie them around her neck, wrists and ankles", he said, "put all four fans on her too, whatever we can do to cool her off!"

Nat and Eirren took some gauze out of our first aid kit and followed Ben's instructions. I got the fans out from underneath the Ford and got them blowing on her. After a few minutes, when we saw no improvement, Ben suggested she be stripped down to her underwear, and Nat and Eirren did just that. Before too long, she'd come to with a low moan.

"Ugghhh", she groaned, "the fuck?"

"Shannon?", I asked, "can you hear me?"

"Yeah?", She said squinting and sitting up, "why the hell am I in my underwear?"

"You suffered a heat stroke", Benjamin said, "it was the only way we could get you cool enough to come to, how you feel?"

She grunted and held her stomach, "my stomach feels bloated, it hurts when I breathe, though I suppose it could have been a lot worse."

"You gonna be okay?", Zack asked.

"Yeah, I'll be fine", Shannon said, "it's happened before."

"In that case we need to be extra careful", Ben said, "try to stay where the most air flow is if you can, it'll help you stay somewhat cooler.

Soon, we learned that not only were we un-prepared for the Southern US, but that even if we had been the desert wasn't going to make this easy for us. By one in the afternoon, the temperature had risen to well over 140 degrees, making everything we had done earlier to prepare for the heat almost worthless. Everyone, including myself, had stripped down to our under wear just to try and stay cool, even though it didn't do a whole lot for us. Another problem that surfaced very quickly was the fact that we drank just about all of our water in the time we were immobile. It became very apparent to me fairly quickly that this wasn't going to work, not all the way to Texas. I was too hot to bring it up at the time, but I knew that we were going to have to build something we could tow behind the Ford if we were going to make it through this ordeal alive. For hours we roasted alive underneath the Ford, the temperature seeming to climb higher and higher, until, at around three, it started to dip. As the sun sank beneath then horizon around six in the evening, it was under a hundred and a gust of wind came by to relieve us of our suffering. We climbed out from underneath the truck, Zack finished what he wasn't able to and closed the hood.

"She's good to go", he told me.

I cautiously opened the door, but even so, the blast of super heated air just about blistered my face. I coughed, waved it away from my face and stuck the key in the ignition, "startin the truck guys, got all that stuff pulled out from under there?"

Eirren replied, "yeah, go ahead."

I climbed into the seat, pushed in the clutch and gave the key a turn. The Ford's engine roared in the quiet evening sunset and the cloud of black exhaust disturbed all of the fine particles underneath. I turned the AC on full blast, shut the door and joined the others in packing up. No one said much of anything, because we were all exhausted, but the one thing that didn't need to be said was the fact that there was no way in hell we could do that a second time. We had to find some place to bunk while built something we could tow behind us to camp in during the day or we'd never make it to Texas. Once everyone was packed up and dressed, we all piled into the Ford's chilled cabin and settled in for what was going to be a long night. I strapped up my harness and put the Ford in first, pulling out into the road, I spoke up.

"We all agree to travel at night from now on right?", I asked.

A round of nods, "yeah, but what the hell are we gonna do about that mother fucking heat during the day?", Shannon asked, "I mean, who even knows if we'll have real shelter available to us, and camping out under the Ford isn't an option anymore given how badly that just went over."

"I know", I said, "I've been dwelling on that all day, and I don't think we have an option other than to build something we can tow behind us and camp in during the day. Something like that is gonna take us a few days to build, which means we'd need to find a base camp that we could rig against the heat until then. But once we actually had it, it would make our lives a lot easier."

"What do you suggest?", Benjamin asked.

"I say we get one of those long white trailers and put three or four hotel through the wall units in it and anchor two gasoline generators to it for power", I said, "I doubt even 200 degrees would be much of a match for four of them in such an small space. We'd be able to sleep in peace during the day as long as we could conceal ourselves."

"What about gas?", Nat asked, "Zack can make diesel, but I've never heard of a portable diesel generator."

"They exist", Zack said, "we'll just have to find them. Certainly there's gotta be at least one or two along our route."

"What about water?", Nero asked, "I mean we just drank every bit we had."

"I've been thinking about that too. Our first concern should just be to strap some 55 gallon drums to whatever trailer we modify and we can purify what we need when we need it."

"With all that said, what's the plan if we're split up, and Demons come knocking?", Eirren asked.

There was a slight pause.

"What is the plan?", Nat asked.

"I don't know yet", I sighed, "truth be told, I'm not sure what we can do, other than stay completely silent."

"If we're gonna be cutting holes for AC units in trailers and running generators", Zack said, "staying quiet is out of the question, we're gonna be seeing some Demons one way or the other before this is over."

"I know", I sighed.

"So again, what do we do if Demons come knocking and you boys are all out on mission."

"Our first plan of action needs to be to find a suitable base camp that we can brace against the heat", I said, "we could run a generator in a garage and vent the exhaust outside from the dryer vent since it's already heat proofed. As long as we have a place to lay low during the day, we can haul ass and get shit done during the night. As far as going on mission is concerned, "one of us will stay behind at all times in case something comes up."

"Sounds like a plan to me", Nat said.

"I'm on board", Eirren agreed.

"Same here", Zack said.

"Better than nothing", Ben shrugged.

I nodded and leaned back in my seat, "next house we find with a garage, we'll stop."