We make it to Omaha, a spark of life in the otherwise barren state. Trains come in and out of the city, keeping their foodscape stable. Stable enough.

There's still enough scarcity to warrant a bustling tin market, taking up an abandoned fire station. A busy tin clinic. Plenty of shrinkage left dangerous abandoned suburbs to comb through, as well as shimmering shantytowns in the seams of urban areas.

It's been like it was, between Harrison and I. Even more than after our campfire conversation. A true settling, like we finally stepped fully into our skins with each other. Some unsaid something relieved to ring in the air, like the sound of his voice rasping in my ear.

We haven't talked about it, but that doesn't surprise me. Having a destination in mind kept us busy, anyway.

Hauling in tin, box goods, and toiletries- coming back with vegetables, needed clothes, and maintenance supplies for our engines. We stay the night twice, hidden away at the core of the abandoned edge of town, blocky unused office buildings keeping the sun off our backs until past midday.

We had enough trade for one more good day, but now I find myself driving quickly down unknown streets, leaving Omaha as fast as we can manage, lucky we'd just gotten full tanks of gas.

I watch Harrison closely in my rearview, prickles and sweat between my palms and the steering wheel.

He has a passenger. Someone neither of us have really met yet.

Sometimes, what you have to do is clear, even if your own reasons are not.

We left town quick once she found us, blood trailing from her hands down her elbows, smeared across her face, staining her sneakers and jeans. A wreck if either of us had ever rubbernecked, colliding with the alleys of her hometown. Some kind of trouble, young as she looked.

She scraped brick down the alley where we'd stopped to organize our spoils from the markets, talking under our breath about the plans for the rest of the day.

Those plans were demolished the moment she stumbled, clearly inebriated, or else very unwell- sobbing after hitting the wall with her shoulder and falling to the ground, cushioned by ancient boxes and disintegrating plastic bags. Half a person, half a wraith, with unwords tumbling over her lips onto the ground.

We didn't waste words. Not even to ask her questions. He scooped her off the ground and we hurried through back streets to the dead apartment complex where we'd stashed our cars. Less than twenty minutes, we were outside of town with the bloodstained girl in the back of Harrison's car.

The amount of police presence- and how willing they are to break their rules- varies city to city. Neither of us are familiar with this one, and the pigs will be far less willing to hear out some scared kid's story than we are. Let alone- well, that's corpse blood. No way she's got that much of it on her without leaving someone very close to dead.

Hours of rattled driving, out into the dead dark of the Omaha outskirts. Once, this was sprawling midwest suburbia, like the kind of people who looked down on me growing up. It was never going to last, longer than a walk away from vegetables.

I pull into the bulbous culdesac of an undead road, far enough from town I'm sure we're alone. In the front seats, I scan over a map of the area, trying to get an idea where we've gone.

There's a river, a state park. There won't be anyone there, and it's probably twenty minute’s drive farther from the city.

Covered in blood. Covered. Runaway from some clutches. Likely to rot in shantytown alleys, if she wasn't chased and dragged back to circumstances unknown. Pirate trade? A body for hire? Does it matter? We're an unrelated element, and impossible to predict. Anyone looking for her might ask friends or family where she went, but never strangers. Especially not traveling strangers like us.

I'm still hesitant on the right to call myself Captain. Call us pirates proper. Harrison keeps it up, but-

We never said a word, did we? Just focused on the task at hand.

Maybe that's the benefit of fucking someone. That valuable, nonverbal quality to my relationships that have gotten physical. There's at least one expression we can share without thinking, then, an animal call back and forth that quickly spreads to other instincts.

Figure this out is all I have in mind. It feels like the same is radiating around him, from his headlights at my back.

We wash her in the river.

I parked on the grass near the edge, wherever it was the least marshy. At this point, enough night has passed to black out between moments. It's the raw hours between midnight and dawn, shaking with adrenaline and missed meals.

She's not crying, now, just shaking. Her skin is ice cold.

“You have a name?” Asks Harrison.

Her shaking hands stumble to peel the shirt off over her head, and I help her. We're cleaning her skin with dish soap.

She shivers. The water is cold, and we're all waist high in it. A fire will be highly necessary once the job is done. At least cold water works at blood better. Maybe that's why we didn't let her sticky up by a fire and warm bathwater.

“T-” She hesitates, the sound repeating a few times before she gets it all out, “Tristie.”

“I'm Harrison,” he says, “and this is Captain Josie.”

She slips on the muck of the river and dunks her dark hair. We hadn't gotten to wash her face yet, but I rub a drop of soap between my fingers and do that now.

Our headlights reflect off the water, wide arcs of white that twinkle off the far trees, but it's still hard to see if we're getting all the blood off.

“I-” She grips Harrison's arms as I toss her wet clothes to the riverbank. She's bone thin, knobby knees and elbows. It's hard to tell how old she is. “I think I killed them-” she stutters, “my- my parents. I think I did it.”

An answer we didn't have to dig for. Runaway.

I frown. “You didn't make sure?”

Harrison elbows me, but Tristie shakes her head.

Maybe the wrong question, fair enough, but if he wants me Captain he has to let me. I hope the look I give him behind her back says that.

The poor girl catches onto tension like it's priority. She looks between us in the odd lighting, rapidfire. “N- no, she's right. I know I killed them. I'm sure.” Her eyes are wild with it, whites shining in the dark.

I push Harrison aside with my shoulder, taking Tristie's hands off him so she can lean on me.

“Go start a fire,” I say. With the night we've had, I don't want to give her more to think on. Including any bickering. It's clear that's something she's sensitive to.

“Aye,” he says, wading back to shore and giving the girl some privacy. Whether he knows my 'whys' or not has never mattered.

The blood soaked down into her sports bra, her panties, and her socks. She rattles with shivering once they're all off, her bones tectonic below the skin.

Harrison leaves one of his towels on the riverbank, dragging crackling driftwood back with him off the bank. Being a park, there's a proper place for bonfires. Being abandoned, there's plenty of untamed wood to feed one.

“We're almost done,” I say to Tristie, scrubbing at her hips and thighs. Letting her drive so long in the blood was bad enough, and makes this part harder. Doing our damn best.

She shoos me off her lower legs, lifting an ankle crosswise to clean off herself. She nearly loses balance, back into the ink. “Why are you helping me?”

I hold her wrist as she scrubs her feet, almost afraid it will snap in my fist.

I don't know, faced with it like that. Knowing and being able to explain are not skills that cross-transfer.

“Because you needed it,” I say.

Clean, I wrap her in the towel. She needs warm immediately, so half-naked I shove her to the light of the flame while I find clothes to lend her. I don't have much as it is, and will want them back, but that's later discussion.

They hang off of her, my shirt falling down off one shoulder. She keeps pulling the pajama pants back up as she paces around the fire. Once the towel was dropped and she covered her skin, it's like her contained energy jumped up a frequency.

She mutters under her breath. Around, around, back, around, back, like an arcane ritual.

Harrison and I watch her with mirrored movements of our heads.

At first, our approach is to let her walk it out while we make dinner, but she keeps pacing as she devours a tin of baked beans, and then green beans, and then beef stew, wearing a muddy track around the bricks. Night stretches towards dawn without any sign of settling. Or even of talking coherently, for that matter. She's back to the same unwords she muttered in the alley.

I sleep first, then Harrison does, someone up to tend the fire and watch her for safety.

She paces all night and into the morning, changing her track to pace around us as we fry eggs and bacon from the tin market. A circle before, stretched oblong around the whole picnic table once we fill the space between it with prep and cookware.

She rattles with the plate in her hands, finally standing still long enough to focus on the food in front of her. Exhausted, she falls into a seat at the picnic table and eats the eggs and bacon with a nodding head.

Worried she’ll topple backwards, I prop myself at her back without touching.

I meet eyes with Harrison and we have a silent conversation.

Worry for her. Relief for handling it. A spark of frustration-

We have unfinished business, that it’s clear will remain unfinished for the time being. That's- inevitable at this point. Neither of us will be comfortable enough to get as close as that with her here, let alone finding time and privacy.

Hell, it's hard to tell how old she is. How isolated. She glows like a plant unearthed beneath a stone, pale to the sun.

“Thanks,” Tristie says, so fast you could miss it.

“Of course,” says Harrison, who cooked the food.

Plate cleaned, she jumps to her feet again and takes up the pacing.

Exhaustion and a spike of pity. God, poor kid.

Harrison nods his head at me towards the cars. I leave my empty plate on the picnic table on my way by and we meet behind Blueberry.

“What should we do?” I ask. Not very Captain of me, to ask.

He shakes his head. “Wait her out. Can’t pace forever.”

“She could pace herself to death-” I look around him to see that she’s still pacing. That's possible, isn't it? Exhaust herself with the stress and ruin her heart and body.

“She ate, we gave her water, but she’ll need sleep eventually,” he chews his lip and sighs, “We can’t exactly hold her down.”

I lower my voice to a whisper, though she’ll be well out of earshot at the fire. “The look on her face.” I shake my head. “She’s losing her mind.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Reminds me of someone.”

Yeah the fuck right.

I hold a stare, then roll my eyes. “I was in better shape than this.”

In response he just points to each of his eyes, widening them theatrically.

“Dickhead.” I hit him on the shoulder, leaving our conversation.

He grabs my ass- the first non-essential contact since we fucked.

I’m already on course for the fire. It’s unexpected, and I stumble, laughing and flipping him off over my shoulder.

When I turn back to Tristie, she stands stock still with an offended look on her face.

“I- I don’t know how you’re laughing,” she snaps.

Fury flares in me at her tone, rising above the stress of the night. The first relaxed moment I've had since we went out of our way to help her, and it's bitten short. Immediately, I blame her.

Her face is twisted. “There’s- There’s still blood under my fingernails- and, and I-”

“You’re going to get used to something real quick,” I snap, crossing to stand in her muddy ring with three long strides, words already boiling in my mouth. “Every asshole here has killed someone. Aye? Take your own time grieving, but don't tell me shit to do with mine.”

She’s two inches shorter, avoiding my gaze without moving an inch. I'm worried I didn't make sense. I'm worried I'll drive her back to wordless. None of that is enough to make me want to withdraw, jaw and skull set to defy her next words, whatever they are.

Harrison comes up behind me, but he knows better than to touch me, buzzing as I am with anger.

Tristie takes a formal backward step to put distance between us and nods her head once. She's rigid with some realization- maybe our power over her. Maybe the weapon at my hip. Both things I'm hoping make her balk.

“Aye?” I bark.

She flinches. “Aye.”

I storm away to the water. And the moment I'm turned, facing green, it feels stupid to have yelled at all.