Sierra observed Vincent with a hawkish gaze as slender talons plucked out dried fruit and crunchy nuts from the glass jar in her grasp. Ravenous munching paused momentarily. Even as she took sips of water, her unwavering focus remained on the man sitting hunched over the map laid on a dusty coffee table, his lips silently mouthing the conundrum that wrinkled his brows. 

Breaking the silence, a soft voice squeaked, “What are you doing?”

“Planning.”

“Planning what?”

“How to get back to Vegas.”

Silence resettled like dust. Vincent had retraced his journey again and again on paper roads and it was the same every time: He took highway 93 south from Boulder City. Stopped in Kingman to follow up on a lead. Got on interstate 40 until it branched off to the 93 again, which was where he marked his map, recorded his odometer, and continued southbound. But, the next east-west interchange, let alone any interchange, wasn’t another ninety miles from Kingman. Yet he found one within thirty miles of the I-40 and highway 93 exchange?  

Something was very wrong. Either with his sense of time or his map. He may have found an interchange that never made it on a map, but if he did take the one shown on all of his maps, he had bigger problems because that would put them on the borders of Legion territory—

“You’ll still take me home, right?” 

Vincent looked over curling edges, then lowered the well-worn paper sensing vulnerability in the girl’s tone. “Of course. You remember where that is?”

Sierra’s shoulders slumped as she looked into the nearly empty jar. “I don’t, but I should.” Eyelashes batted. She untucked dusky strands from behind her ear when the sniffles came. 

Vincent stood up from the sofa and started across the room. He didn’t know what to say, just that the girl needed to hear something reassuring. He hoped to find it on the way but when he sat on the edge of the bed and Sierra hung her head, hiding her face from him, he still had nothing. Vincent loathed how familiar the scene was. His mother would come everytime he cried for help, but after a certain age it seemed she just stopped trying. Growing pains were no longer scraped knees or bruised elbows to be wrapped up and kissed. Perhaps this uncertainty that kept Vincent from speaking was the same his mother struggled with. Yet that was the problem—She never said anything at all. 

“I’m sorry,” he said in the gentle voice he longed to hear in another life. “I don’t know why you can’t remember, Sierra.” Her sobs hushed. Red eyes peeked out from behind trembling fingers. Vincent reclined on his elbow, a faint smile pressed his lips. “Memories can come back. Sights, smells, and the like might trigger something, so give it time.”

Sierra wiped away her tears with a sniffle. Damp hands settled on her lap and fingers intertwined, clenching together in a rhythmic dance of anxiety. “What if they don't?”

“That doctor friend I told you about, Julie, she’s real good at what she does,” Vincent assured. “No matter what happens, you won’t be alone with it. I promise.”

Passing the stair’s boundary was like walking into a wall of fire. The closer to the door the hotter the inferno raged and should Vincent open it to find firestorms spinning in a red sky and obsidian clouds spitting brimstone he wouldn’t have been surprised. Not even outside yet and the first licks of sweat gathered on his back with Sierra hanging on him. He let her down on the seat and prepared for the doorknob’s burn. Twisting quickly and yanking it open, a warm draft breathed on him. The sky was still blue. Still an expansive, cloudless void that gave him vertigo flinging his head back in search of charcoal clouds and for where the sun hung at eleven o’clock like a burning eye incinerating shade everywhere its scorching gaze landed. 

Vincent turned back to Sierra, finding her chinstrap dangling loose. He sat his own helmet on the bike’s seat and said, “hold still.” She froze, holding her breath as He tightened the straps. Timid eyes glanced at him, turning her peppered nose and cheeks pink under a glistening layer of aloe. “Alright, we're gonna set out, so hang on tight. If anything’s wrong just tap my shoulder and we’ll stop, okay?”

The Mojave wasn’t too different from this patch of desolation, but something felt all wrong here. He was at home like a sun-basking lizard being a desert rat at heart and by birth. No matter where he was in the valley whether it was Vegas or Yucca, Vincent knew how to get back home. He read the plants like a guide, the boulders as his trail markers, and the contours of immovable mountains were landmarks, but here… Miles of dusty desert wastes lay around them. The sun hiked a cloudless sky faster than it should. Searing hands caressed his exposed skin like a sadistic lover. Skipped the foreplay altogether and crushed him beneath its weight. Invaded his mouth with a hot, airy tongue, rushing down his throat then set his lungs ablaze in an embrace to squeeze every last drop out of him as though any moisture were criminal in these lands.

He anticipated all that, however, this wasn’t the Mojave. This wasn’t even the Sonoran desert. It was a pervasive sense of dread tailing him, burning a hole in his forehead where a bullet used to be and growing like the number on the odometer. They had been riding for miles and for what felt like hours. He didn’t take a wrong turn. Vincent wasn’t a rookie at this anymore, and while at the time he hated Wayne squawking at him like a mother hen to always double, triple, quadruple check everything, he took the old man’s advice in his absence. But land doesn’t grow back overnight after a tornado that could put a nuke to shame tore it to shreds. 

At high noon, Sierra tapped his shoulder and pointed to an oncoming sign. The first sign seen all day—a sunbleached billboard and its peeling advertisement: Hell’s Half-Acre, 5 miles.

Five miles on the dot, in the middle of nowhere, was a nostalgic desert oasis. The googie sign caught his eye first, sun-faded and buzzing red starbursts and a blue arrow declared it as advertised, Hell’s Half-Acre Diner and Motel. An upswept and devilishly sharp chrome roof shaded a row of sleek motorcycles kissing the curb underneath. Sun-bathing cars watched the highway, glinting proudly and begging for their sharp tailfins and pastel shades to be admired for enduring the centuries out here untouched. Across the dirt lot, was the motel; a lengthy two-story teal and white trimmed building lacking the diner’s hubbub. Desert wind chipped away the white trim of wood eaves. Rust devoured iron rails gating the balcony and stairs. Faded verdigris and white circles sticking out of its slanted roof hinted it may have had its own name in its hey-day but now it stood there in the shadow of the diner like a red-headed step-child. 

The hairs on Vincent’s neck and arms stood on end rolling under the time-capsule’s shade. Stopping the bike but not cutting the engine yet, he took off his helmet and looked over his shoulder at Sierra. “Wanna check it out?”

She peeked through clear glass windows and shiny chrome trim at the bustling crowds inside. “Better than roasting out here.”

A cheerful jingle greeted them at the door. Cool air staved off the desert as a timeless jukebox transitioned to the next jiving song, hushing conversations to a hum again. Pristine checkerboard floors paved the way to the only empty seats in the whole diner—a duo of shiny red stools at the bend of a boomerang-shaped bar where Vincent stooped to a squat and let Sierra off his back. The girl nestled in without a care, snagging a miniature jukebox toy off the countertop and flipping through its titles. 

Pop!

Vincent peered down the long chrome topped bar where a curly brunette waitress blew another bubble as pink as her lipstick into the magazine spread beneath a bored gaze. Looking back at Sierra, he found the girl deep in her own reading of the desserts section of a maroon leatherette menu. 

“Stay put.”

Sierra’s bronze gaze bore a hole through Vincent. “Not like I have a choice…”

Pretending he didn’t hear that and didn’t feel like an ass for saying it, Vincent cooly strode down the counter and leaned on the chrome across the waitress. “Don’t suppose you can tell me what highway that is out there?”

“Yeah,” she chuckled, not bothering to look up at him, “the highway to hell.”

She pinched a page between pearly nails, slowly turning it over as a slit wrist gaped open. Vincent flushed white. He stepped back, staring in disbelief and blinking away what was evidently not a hallucination. Finding a second clean slice as lethally deep under her other hand, he braced for the shock. But she didn’t scream. Didn’t faint either since no blood gushed out severed veins and arteries. In fact, it seemed she didn’t care at all that her raw flesh, fatty padding, glistening muscle and ligaments were hanging out in the air where they didn’t belong.

Curiosity compelled Vincent forward as it often did. One couldn’t help but wonder how the hell she was still alive, or standing, or even using hands dangling on by threads. A long minute passed standing there in front of her before he finally stammered out, “how can I get to New Vegas?”

The waitress tilted her head and pencil thin brows arched, stretching the pastel color smeared over eyes that never parted the magazine’s pages. “Oh, that’s what everyone’s calling it now?”

“What about that motel? They taking guests?”

“Sure. People are checking in all the time.” The waitresses shrugged. She rolled her head over to the other shoulder and listlessly sighed, “don’t know about checking out...”

“Mindy!” A second waitress burst through the kitchen doors, hurriedly tying apron ribbons around her plump figure. “What did I tell you about reading that smut?” The younger waitress rolled her eyes. She turned the page and Vincent followed, interested to know what could be so enthralling—more so about smut—yet he found gibberish. Incoherent text that ran vertically and horizontally in all sizes, overlapping and creating grotesque images in the white voids between that moved like a holoreel. 

“What can I get y’all?” The older waitress chirped, coming to a stop at the bar. Crows' feet wrinkled blue powdered eyes as a wide smile stretched the drawn on mole above thin red lips just for Sierra.

The sheepish girl timidly asked, “can I have a sundae?”

“Of course!” The woman nodded, whipping out a palm-sized notepad and pencil from an apron pocket. Vincent returned to the stool, glancing at the name tag pinned on her candy striped uniform revealed her to be Lonnie. “What about you, hun?”

“Nothing for me, thank you.”

“I’ll be right back with that sundae, sweetie!” 

Vincent leaned to Sierra, whispering discreetly, “what’s a sundae?”

“You don’t know what a sundae is?”

“Gee, I’m askin’ aren’t I?” 

“It’s ice cream…” 

“What’s ice cream?”

Sierra stared at Vincent, her brows furrowing as her cross expression waned. “Oh, you’re serious?”

Before he said something stupid, Lonnie reappeared, a tall crystal glass in hand, stuffed with white cream, drizzled with gooey brown syrup, and topped with a too perfect cherry.

“Enjoy!” 

Vincent, however, would do no such thing. As soon as Lonnie twirled around, he slid the glass away from Sierra.

“Hey!”

“Wait.” Sierra crossed her arms. Her sour look lingered in Vincent’s peripherals as he sniffed the chilly concoction, taking in its sweet and cool flavor. Dislodging the spoon took a lump of cream with it but he shoved it back in before it dripped anywhere. Vincent slid the glass back to her, satisfied there wasn’t something terribly wrong with it but Sierra’s offended glare remained.

“What did you do that for?”

Peeping over his shoulder, four bikers in impeccable leather sat oddly silent, staring vacantly at each other behind obsidian lenses. In the next booth was a family of four, and had the mother not looked at the stranger gawking at her, Vincent would have kept on thinking they were mannequins having such a flawless appearance. The trio in the next booth were the same; meticulously combed hair, pressed clothes free of the blemishes of wasteland living, perfect skin and perfect smiles. His suspicious squint hopped from one booth to the next knowing too perfect cherries concealed pits. Yet, they were all the same. Everyone in this damn diner looked like they just walked out of old-world advertisement and shirked off the apocalypse. 

“What’s wrong?” 

Vincent snapped back to reality. Sierra licked a smudge of chocolate from her lips then shoveled another spoonful of ice cream in her mouth. “Doesn’t this place seem off to you?”

“Off?” Sierra glanced at the people, gauged her own presentation, and then Vincent…  Weathered leather and rope restrained tarnished signs to his patched Kevlar vest, concealing a knife under a Nevada license plate.  She counted two guns holstered at his waist. One silvery revolver and one black automatic pistol alongside a collapsed cylinder scuffed and dangling from a carabiner on his belt loop that ended in two short prongs. Four spiked rings he twirled around while lost in thought hugged inked knuckles on his right hand. And of course, the scar splitting his brow like lightning, striking one paralyzed, pinpoint pupil. “We’re the kind-of-off ones, don't you think? You’re more weird though.”

Bells jingled and Vincent peeled his warning glare of the girl, throwing it to the stranger wrapped in riding leathers swaggering inside. The half-dome helmet and aviators resting underneath the visor obscured his eyes. His head swiveled side to side as he strutted to the counter, silently observing the diner’s patrons while a cowardly hand rested on the butt of his revolver. When the stranger stopped at the bar facing the kitchen window, he held Vincent’s stare, raising a hand and brushing non-existent dust off the gold five-pointed star pinned to his breast pocket. The badge shimmered, and suddenly Vincent got an itch on his nose only a middle finger could satisfy.

“You must be enjoying that sundae,” Lonnie sang as she strolled by.  Her smile stretched from ear to ear, bunching eyes to little beady dots. “It’s all over your face!”

“‘scuse me, Ma’am—“

“What did you need, hun?”

“Do you know how far this place is from New Vegas?” 

“Oh, worlds away!” A snort snuck in Lonnie’s giggle. “If you’re lost you oughtta go to the DMV down the road. They got maps to show you around.”

“Down the road?” Vincent’s scarred brow arched as a pair of side-eyes peered out the diner’s windows for miles of nothingness in all directions.

“Yep. Just get back out on the highway that way. You can’t miss it!”  Satisfied with a job well done, she twirled around, patted the wispy backside of a ruby beehive and sauntered to the stranger. Waiting, and watching at the long end of the bar. 

Talking with that stranger though, Lonnie’s cheer vanished. Thin red lips pursed to an “O”. Plump hands splayed on her cheeks as if to convince him she was taken aback by the revelation bestowed on her. Vincent muttered to himself the words he could read on their lips, shaking his head subtly where one didn’t make sense. Putting the pieces together recollected an incomplete picture yet when Lonnie glanced at the odd pair, failing to be discreet as she met Vincent’s striking eyes, a sixth sense he called self-preservation tickled every nerve in his body.

“It’s time to go,” Vincent said, turning Sierra’s chair around as he came to his feet.

“But—” The girl looked at him, dumbfounded when the spoon in her hand disappeared and clanked in the glass’s last creamy scoop.

There was only one direction on the highway outside; this way or that way and Vincent wasn’t sure if either was the correct way. Down the road, now, that’s relative. Down the road was always something more, something new, even if Vincent had already been there before. 

Except here.

After the second time they passed the diner going, well, cardinal directions didn’t mean anything on this highway, so he went left. The third time he retraced the prior trip by going right. Still didn’t matter. His pip-boy didn’t work. His maps were useless. Even the antique compass delegated to the bottom of his backpack spun like a drunk on the dance floor. Uncoordinated and falling face-first. Vincent drew hard sixteens round after round playing a nameless desert highway. Worst of all, was his bankroll sliding to the side of empty. 

Sinister chrome spokes burned his eyes. He blinked away the sting but its curvy red silhouette was seared on his eyelids. The motorcycle rolled to a stop and once its inertia threatened to tip them over, Vincent planted both boots on asphalt. His hands slipped off gritty bars, slapping his thighs as he squinted at that damned diner simmering on the sun bleached horizon. He sat there for a minute, breathing in the exhaust and parsing the ominous hum buzzing just below the engine’s vibrations. The wind died down as though turned off by the malcontent sun slowly magnifying on its only victims. Sierra’s arms tightened around his waist to remind him she was still there. She peeked around Vincent, blinking at the diner as it twisted something in her gut, wondering if he felt it too. 

The motorcycle crept forward, veering off onto a gravel shoulder where the engine died and Vincent dismounted. He yanked his helmet and allowed the warm air to dry the sweat dabbing his face as he walked to the back of the bike.  Rope unwound around two flat cans between his passenger’s backrest and the storage box. Liquid sloshed in rust eaten tin as the gas tank guzzled it down. Down to one can and stuck in the middle of nowhere. 

“Put this on,” Vincent ordered as he handed a shallow glass jar to the girl watching him. Sierra slouched, recognizing the peculiar goop with a funny smell. As she did that, Vincent shaded her, buried in his map for one more hopeless attempt to get out of Dodge. There was at least a hundred miles left between half-a-tank and one gas can in his bike, which wouldn’t bother him, if he wasn’t stranded on an asphalt paved Mobius loop. 

“Hello there!”

Vincent dropped his map. He turned to the distant voice, holding his hand on the ready. The stranger, who couldn’t have been on a road driven thrice over, never once seen and had no place to hide, not even a bramble bush, sluggishly strolled to them. Getting closer, he waved a hand, lifting the threaded ends of his patchwork coat to reveal his only weapon; a 22 revolver. Still, Vincent’s pistoleering hand lingered on the warm steel holstered at his side.

“It’s been miles since I saw a friendly face,” the man’s smile squinted the paler skin around brown eyes. His mangled glove threads bounced as he extended a hand. “The name’s Malcolm.”

“Vincent.”

“Say, is that a blue star you got there?” Malcolm adjusted the disintegrating ball cap on his head as he eyeballed the flattened bottle cap tied to Vincent’s wrist.

“What about it?” He asked as Sierra peeked around him for a gander at the new stranger. Vincent shifted his weight to his other foot, blocking Malcolm’s quick peep at the girl.

“Don’t you know the legend of the blue stars?” Vincent’s scarred brow peaked, the awkward silence compelled the older fellow to continue as Vincent knew it would. Malcolm scratched his curly gray beard and said, “there’s an old wasteland legend that says somewhere out there is a fabulous treasure—”

The deafening horn silenced Malcolm. Then he disappeared altogether, taken for a ride on the grill of a colossal monster on sixteen wheels. The beast’s gale shoved Vincent to his bike. With Sierra clutching him for dear life and Vincent awkwardly balancing on bent knees, clawing the bike at the same time to keep that from toppling over, he stared at his shocked reflection on a glossy white body. The last gust rustled his hair, pulled him properly to his feet, and with that, the roaring monster was half a mile down the road. 

Sierra and Vincent watched til the truck was a tiny, sparkling blot on the horizon, swallowed up between mountain ranges and torn to shreds by the heat mirage.

“Um,” Sierra’s white finger tips unlatched from his shoulders. She pointed down the road. “What’s that?”

Vincent peeled unblinking eyes off the twinkle in the distance, turned his stiff neck to his other shoulder where a quarter of a mile from them was a blue and pink building, sharply slanted then smooth by rounded arcades stretching the length of its facade. Vincent blinked at it, then again, and once more, yet the DMV shimmering on the side of the road he drove by three times, and could clearly see from the diner inside and out, remained as though it was always there.

“What the fuck.”

Voicing that thought, however, didn’t make the feeling leave him. Not even when the two were there, parked outside blushing stucco walls. Vincent sheltered the cruiser in the arcade’s shade and under the watch of a row of dark windows. Hefting Sierra on his back, he watched the uncertainty of his reflection in tinted doors overtake the empty parking lot sitting in an even emptier desert behind him. He pushed through, a hand resting on his 9mm as the girl’s grip around his shoulders tightened.

Blessed air conditioning met them first. The faint after taste of mold came second, lingering in the air like the garnish on top of a quiet, seething rage that was only found in a DMV lobby. Six rows of chairs claimed half of the room that seemed bigger from the outside, and in those stiff seats were glazed eyes and weary faces staring dead-ahead at the counter opposite to them. The other half of the lobby was a long, winding line of gray folk. Gray. As though they stepped out of ancient photos and holotapes just to spend eternity in a line slower than molasses. There wasn’t one splash of color to those peculiar people of varying shapes and sizes and sexes and ages that sluggishly inched forward every time a garbled voice interrupted muzak playing overhead, and a bright light flashed at the far end of the line where neither could see.

“She looks like she could help,” Sierra whispered, pointing to one of two obvious staff. The other being hidden behind the square hole punched in the wall labeled 4 a couple paces down. With no better bet in sight, Vincent approached the listless brunette filing shiny maroon talons. 

“Excuse me.” Brown eyes glared through dense lashes at the scum who dared to interrupt her important work. “Can you tell me where I am?”

She rolled her eyes, letting them land back to her nails as her lips curled in disgust, then she said with a voice that refused to utilize her nostrils and in an accent dragged across the Rocky Mountains, “the D. M. V.” She jabbed her nail file at the ticket dispenser on the edge of her counter. “Take a number.”

Every so often, one encounters certain individuals that ignite a primal rage contained in all men at the mere sight or,  sometimes, sound of the offending individual. For Vincent, this was one of those times. 

He lunged forward, nostrils flaring on the charge as the wide-eyed girl on his back buckled in for her first rodeo. “Obviously I’m in the fucking day-ehm-vay. Where the hell is it?”

She splayed out her hand, inspecting her work while penciled on eyebrows as thin as her IQ rose. “Sounds like you already know.”

Vincent viciously yanked a number from the ticket dispenser, glaring at the offending woman as he marched to an empty seat in the last row. He stooped to a squat and let Sierra off his back. The girl winced as she squirmed, clutching the stained cushion and unable to find a comfortable position. 

“What’s wrong?”

“My back is hurting again and I get, like, these zaps in my legs. It feels like fire.” Sierra flinched at another searing pinch. She looked at Vincent still squatting next to her, “It doesn’t hurt as much when I’m on your back…”

Vincent shuffled around and let her hitch a ride. Coming back to his feet, an ache of his own rattled his spine. He held up her limp legs by the crook of her knees and paced down the back of the lobby where a colorful poster he initially ignored caught his eye. An obnoxiously curly and colorful font lamented rather passive-aggressively the virtue of patience for the understaffed crew, and to thank those clerks who were fired to fund a bloated administrations’ indefinite vacation. Vincent scoffed. Shaking his head and moving along, he knew all that kept these people from rioting was discount Frank Sinatra lulling them docile on the overhead speakers. 

“Oh! There’s maps over there!” 

Vincent followed Sierra’s finger to the other side of the lobby where a magazine rack stocked with road atlases and maps waited to be pilfered. Sticky fingers twitched in anticipation as Vincent scoured loot ripe for the pickins. He snatched a paper map of Nevada first and flicked it open where he found his old friend of disappointment. It was Nevada alright—The shape that is. Just a black line of sharp angles, straight lines, and squiggles down south on white paper, but in the middle of it was a dark blot. He squinted at the vaguely word-shaped smudge. Brought the map close enough to inhale its smell and finally read the black ink to find what he already knew. Nevada.

He crumpled the paper in his hands and threw it aside to pluck out another map. But it was the same. One after another, they were all the same. All except for the shape printed on blank paper and the insulting, minuscule whisper of that territory’s name in the center of it. He yanked out an atlas next and flipped that open. Blinding white met his eyes from front to back. Frantically pulling out another, he flipped through that then tossed it on the pile growing around him. Again and again he flipped through the atlasses of a nation long gone until his eyes caught a minor change on white pages. His thumb paused.

“You are here,” it said in plain text. Vincent shivered. His hairs stood on end and his stomach dropped. He flipped the next page, and it said the same. The next and the next and then it spelled it out for the hard-headed man page by page. “You. Are. Always. Here.”

The atlas hit a window with a hard thud. Vincent kicked through the pile of crumpled and shredded paper and marched to the counter, this time for window 4. 

“Uh-oh,” the clerk on the other side chuckled. “Spelling error.”

“‘Scuse me, miss. One second—” Vincent butted between the woman and the window, ignoring her protest as he bellowed out, “how the hell do I get back to civilization—” 

Vincent halted in his tracks, staring as equally wide eyed as the limbless man on the other side of the window typing away at a terminal with the eraser end of a pencil grasped between teeth. 

Eyes blinked behind thick glasses as the pencil fell. “Y-you have to wait your turn, sir.”

“Nah, you give some damn clear directions back to Vegas, California, wherever!—hell I’d even take a route to Arizona—or I chuck you like grenade out the window and in that fucking desert.”

Sweat beads gathered on the clerk’s receding hairline. “Y-you want to go to… Vegas?”

“Yes!”

“I suppose you could walk…”

“Do I look like I wanna fucking walk to Vegas?”

The clerk flinched. “You could drive—Oh, well, um, you have to have a license for that…”

“A what?”

“A driver license,” he said, “t-to operate vehicles—”

Vincent pressed his forehead to the glass. “Do you understand what I am saying?”

“If not you’ll have to—have to file for a permit,” the clerk explained as a gust rushed behind the window. Loose papers whirled around him, slipping out of shelves, and disorganized filing cabinets. “—Oh, but you have to take the permit test first and then you’ll get your learner’s permit which then lets you drive but only if you have a licensed driver with you in the vehicle.” Vincent simmered watching the growing stack of papers gathering at the window’s slot. “Then when you’re ready, you can take the test—”

“Oh, for fuck’s sake!” Vincent threw up his hands in defeat, spun around, and marched towards the door. 

Glass rattled with a swift kick. He stopped in the door frame though. Eyes squinted at the stranger from the diner, now standing next to his motorcycle and writing on a notepad in hands. “Hey! Get away from my bike,” Vincent ordered, marching over as his ready hand gripped the 9mm in its holster. 

The stranger nonchalantly raised his head and dark lenses turned on Vincent. He tore off the paper from his notebook. “No parking here.”

“On whose authority?” Vincent scoffed, wringing the pistol’s grip, but he wouldn’t draw it on a man who hadn't drawn his own.

The stranger tapped his pen on the shiny badge pinned to his pressed button-down shirt. “Highway patrol.”

“Go patrol a cactus with your asshole and get away from my property.”

The officer cocked his head as something funny tugged the corner of his lips. Vincent’s scowl soured in the reflection off the man’s sunglasses. 

“Pay your ticket.” The officer’s leather-gloved hand lingered, still holding the ticket while its intended recipient's unwavering glare remained fixed on him. Leaving the ticket on the seat, the officer squared his shoulders. Standing tall only put him a few inches over Vincent, but peacocking never intimidated him. “I don’t think you belong here.”

“If I’m in the market for an opinion to wipe my ass with, I’ll come find you.” Sierra’s arms tightened around Vincent’s shoulders, forcing him to realize her trembles and shallow breaths heating the back of his neck. 

The officer laughed, still chuckling at a punchline only he knew and strode to his own bike parked curbside. Meanwhile, inside the DMV, the camera flashed again and a gray washed woman disappeared. The dreary collective moved forward. However, one man looked at the door. His rigid head ground atop a stone neck then he stepped out of line, his stiff, cold armatures snapped and cracked into shapes not made in years as he lumbered for the glowing exit sign.

Vincent’s wheels swept the day from the sky in the few minutes it took for them to roll along the highway to the diner. The sleek sweeping roof loomed overhead. Ghostly white bulbs flickered when the bike stopped underneath as though a warning for Vincent to take heed of the feeling in his gut that sent little hairs standing on end once more. Dismounting the bike, he peered through the moonless void that swallowed up the DMV and everything the diner’s lights couldn’t reach. 

Haunting silence engulfed their surroundings—no wind, no insect symphony—only the diner and a sliver of highway where the abyss tested thrumming electrical boundaries that would drive a man mad for a lack of any natural noise. On the other side of misty shadows, weak orange bulbs bloomed through the haze, glinting on tarnished metal room numbers.  Heading the motel was the pale trim framing a vacant lobby glowing a mint hue. And there in a window’s corner, a shadow slowly retreated out of sight. 

The door jingled as Vincent pushed through, but his confident stride faltered as the crinkling under his boots couldn’t be ignored. Warped checkerboard linoleum popped up after he lifted his feet. Curling edges licked the blackening wood veneer of dreadfully empty booths and the rusting base of the boomerang bar. Tread prints of varying shapes and sizes crisscrossed and intersected on the white squares only. Following a familiar set led him to the pair of stools claimed some hours earlier.

“Are you sure this is the same place?” Sierra whispered to him, peering over his shoulder for what he took a moment to stare at.

Yellow foam peeked through the tear down the middle of maroon vinyl. Brown rings echoed the stool’s deviation from its established base and when he dropped the backpack hanging off his arm, the corroded seat squeaked under its weight. Vincent let Sierra down on the better stool. She grimaced, muffling her protests and adjusting to a less painful position. 

“Let’s get you something for the pain,” Vincent muttered, looking over his shoulder at the only other signs of life in the diner; a corner pocket of four Vaquero looking folk, surrounding an even more vile woman, and a waitress leaving them a platter. Clamor from the kitchen window added a cook. Vincent turned her stool around so he could keep an eye on the last booth while quick hands retrieved a needle syringe and vial to prepare a shot between glances over the chrome boomerang. Sierra turned her head away and flinched at the quick jab.

“Today’s special is black coffee and cigarettes,” the waitress said, her raspy voice piercing the cigarette bobbing on her lips because she had forty decades of practice according to the years told on her face. 

“Finally, something edible.” Vincent tossed the syringe and vial back in a pocket within a pocket.

The waitress cocked her hips stopping at the bar. She whipped out her little book and began writing. “Roach in a bath—got it.” Weary brown eyes peeped through drooping lids and smoke at Sierra. Cold, bony fingers plucked out her cigarette. “What about you, doll?” 

“I-I’m not hungry,” Sierra muttered. Her nervous glance avoided the waitress, landing instead on the Vaqueros at the other side of the diner. 

“Suit yourself,” the waitress stuck her cigarette between sagging red lips. She tucked away her booklet and turned to the counter behind her. 

“This place is a lot different during the day,” Vincent noted. When the skinny old woman came back, setting down a saucer holding his hot cup of coffee and a fresh cigarette, he looked at her nametag. 

“Truth comes out in the dark, don’t it, honey?” Ruby snuffed her butt in an ashtray then reached in her platinum perm for the fresh one resting on her ear. 

Vincent took the cigarette from the saucer, held it like he was supposed to, fidgeted with it like he used to watch Lawrence do all while discreetly eyeing for a label that wasn’t on the soft white stick. His dissatisfied gaze wandered to the chrome that was shiny enough to catch his reflection earlier, but was now tarnished, dented, smudged… A bit sticky, like the menu Sierra pinched between two fingers and gave a terrible frown to trying to make out faded ink on browning paper. Nostalgic red that painted the diner’s motifs faded under the greenish hue cast by offensive overhead lights. Too dark yet too bright, and also somehow too loud for such a place. 

“If that’s true,” Vincent folded his arms on the cold bartop, “what can you tell me about that highway out there? Say, why it doesn't go anywhere?”

Ruby’s gaunt face turned up after igniting her new cigarette. “That highway will go wherever you want it to, you just gotta get on it.”

“Strange…” Vincent muttered. “This diner was full of people during the day. I’ve been on that highway all day and there was nobody else out there.”

“What makes you think they took the same route?”

“There’s only one highway.” Vincent’s tone shortened. 

“Like I said, it’ll take you wherever you wanna go. You just have to get on the road.”

Vincent scraped his thumbnail back and forth on the cigarette crushed between finger joints. Ruby tilted her head on one shoulder as she inhaled. Orange embers bloomed like minuscule neon lights. Vincent’s stick fractured in two. “I’ve been wanting to go to Vegas—Home. Yet I’m still here.”

Ruby nonchalantly stepped forward. She pressed her bony elbows on the counter. Exhaling smoke away from Vincent. Her wrinkled eyes flickered back and forth on the man across from her as if considering something about him. “All those people… They’re here because they can’t let go.” Ruby’s tobacco and whiskey voice seeped out her lips like the smoke. “What aren’t you letting go of?”

Vincent held the old woman’s gaze. He didn’t blink for fear of missing the tell that would give away she was bullshitting him. She looked at him much the same, bringing her cigarette back to thinning lips.

A small hand poked his arm as an even smaller voice whispered his name. Sierra’s face twisted in fear. “They’re giving me a bad feeling.”

Vincent followed her fretful gaze to the last booth in the far corner. The chill crawling down his skin flushed the color from his face. Certainly they were Vaqueros when he first looked at the table. Wide and burly men. Unwashed, leather bound beasts branded with patches, scars, and a hide redder than the Valley of Fire’s stone flesh. And he had certainly looked at them upon entering the diner—it was impossible not to. Impossible not to notice the only other souls haunting the neglected, dingy joint. But somehow three ghosts of his past stared back at him like the life-sucking black hole of the wrong end of a gun.

A black and white checkered suit, a centurion in blood-dyed regalia, and a spy disguised by a fox’s mantle. But in between them was a face not recognized because under the blackened grease painting a skullish face upon a lively complexion was not one he maimed, beat, or broke.

“Time to go.”

Crossing the murky darkness enveloping the dirt lot was like wading through water. The bike hacked out a wet cough. Speedometer and tachometer struggled to rise. The headlight’s beam barely escaped inky black when it wasn’t flickering with the dashboard’s lights. The engine spit its last phlegmy cough rolling in the hazy yellow spotlight beaming down on the motel’s door. Vincent dismounted. Eyes darted around his immediate surroundings before narrowing on the empty lobby through clear glass windows. 

Buzzing fluorescent lights flickered intermittently overhead, casting eerie shadows on migraine-green walls. Neglected and marred aqua and rose checkered linoleum floors gathered the years in corners and crevices created by the receptionist’s counter that watched the door. Vincent adjusted the girl slipping down his back and started for the counter occupied by nothing but a little steel bell. Vinyl peeled off the particleboard top, disintegrating and curling at the freed ends rotted black and brown. Splintered edges caught the fabric of his vest, scraping his eardrums raw with a terrible noise that twisted up the man’s face with an equally offensive grimace. Behind it, an abstract piece of art hung, framing washed out pastels far too soulless and bizarre for even the motels of New Vegas.

Ding!

A dainty hand retreated behind Vincent. He turned his head for the girl hanging on his back but his eyes stopped on a machine stuffed in a corner. It stood about his height, should he be honest and take off the boots giving him some generous inches. Sun-yellow stripes mirrored dusty blinds on the side of its white shell that faced the window and where three faded blue letters stacked atop one another. In its center facing Vincent, was a recessed window holding a corroded steel grate and a scratched chrome dispenser. 

“Ice?” Vincent squinted at the machine, looking for its catch or fee, but it said nothing  beyond humming low and ominously. He reached inside the recessed shelf and pushed the lever. Roused from its slumber, the machine roared at him and spat out wet chunks and slivers. He quickly retracted from the steely maw. In one swift move, Vincent snatched the short stack of buckets sitting atop the ice machine and shoved them inside the dispenser. Filling up one, he handed it off to Sierra, “Hold onto that.”

She rightly gave him a strange look but took the bucket anyway. “What are you doing?”

“It’s free water,” Vincent said, setting down a full bucket at his boots.

“It’s motel ice. It’s gross!” 

Vincent chuckled dismissively. “You ain’t gonna say that when—“

“Hello!”

Vincent spun around, sending a short lived shower of ice slivers on the floor. The machine’s growls hushed to disquiet rumbles and spits before ceasing entirely. 

There at the counter that was desolate moments ago was a mundane face wearing a friendly smile that blinked at the two. He pushed up the thick square lenses sitting on his rosy pock-marked nose. “Need a room?”

“Yes.”

“I got plenty!” The night auditor enthused, flipping through an unseen ledger resting on his desk. Vincent cautiously approached the man, sizing up the stranger who had seemingly come out of nowhere. He glanced at the front door—No, that old thing woke the dead when they strolled on in. But that door behind the counter… Vincent stared at it, puzzled and certain it wasn’t there before because he would have noticed those gouges shredding the lower half.

“Have something on the ground floor?” 

“Sure do!” Bright brown eyes wrinkled as the man looked up from his ledger. He was an average man with a forgettable shaven face. Not of notable size or build but it wasn’t the first time Vincent’s instincts were lighting up big neon words that spelled out danger in bold, bright letters for someone so innocuous. 

“And, that ice…” Vincent coolly leaned on the counter, readied his haggling persona and met the unnaturally enthusiastic man’s eyes again. “That complimentary?”

“Sure is!”

Vincent nodded. “Not bad.” 

“Just need your name, sir! The one given to you,” he abruptly added. 

“Vincent.”

“That’s the one given to you, huh?” The auditor hummed with a provocative note of disbelief.

“Yes.”

The auditor hung his head and scribbled in his ledger. “There’s so much in a name, don’t you think?”

“I guess,” Vincent muttered, staring at the thinning whorl atop the auditor’s head. 

“Do you think our names conform to us or the other way around?” He popped his head up again, still wearing an open mouth smile that squinted his beady eyes to little black slits. 

“What—“

“I just love learning name meanings!” The auditor exclaimed as he produced a thick paperback book, crinkled and creased down its spine that was aptly titled Names and Their Meanings. He flipped the pages before Vincent could open his mouth. “I wish I had one—Oh! Yours means to conquer! Have you done any conquering lately? And conquering—that’s a loaded word don’t you think? What comes to mind when I say conquer? War? Violence? Killing—“

“Conquer comes to mind—“

“—Murder? Deceit?”

A vicious smile stretched across the auditor’s face again, rousing every hair on Vincent’s body to stand up with a hurried shiver. He stared at the strange little man, stupefied, too aware of his quickening heart until dim brown eyes glanced at Sierra and Vincent snapped. “Give me a room.”

“Oh!” The book dropped, clapping shut on the counter as the auditor thrust a bronze key with a red room tag across the counter. “Ground floor!” 

Vincent snatched the key, keeping his scowl on the inhuman grin across from him. Unease swelled before him, pushing Vincent several steps backwards before spinning around and shoving through the door. He hopped on the bike. Relieved the ninety pound burden on his back and replaced her with a stiff ache. 

“That was weird,” Sierra whispered. Vincent kicked up the stand and walked the bike around the lobby corner by the tips of his boots. Passing the motel's dimly lit windows, he stole a quick glance over his shoulder, confirming the unsettling feeling that being watched wasn't just paranoia.

Abruptly, Vincent stopped.

On the other side of Vincent and Sierra’s horrified reflections was the night auditor. He was sat upon the desktop, stuffed inside a rust spackled steel bucket stained by streams of dried blood from his missing lower half. His head pivoted on his neck, unnaturally stiff and rigid, still wearing a smile that lacked sincerity.

Sierra's white-knuckled claws sank into Vincent's arms. His soles stuttered on concrete before catching traction. “This whole fuckin’ place is weird.”

Orange haze misted the long rows of doors reaching into the far and dreadful darkness of a starless night. Thrumming electricity ceased. Astounding silence crept beneath his skin for a dreadful second, clung to him like hot, sticky summer nights in Yucca Valley that kept his teen years so sleepless. He glanced up from the red key tag. One light flickered three times, and each buzzy hum dragged his stomach down lower in his gut as he counted down the numbers to their room. He looked up at the light above the door, behaving now that the two were exactly where they should be. Vincent went in after his pistol. He swung around the doorway, flicking on the switch then advanced for the beds. With nothing hiding in between, he moved on to the bathroom and an adjacent closet.

Sierra was watching the show from the bike parked at the open door. Vincent quickly returned to her, hopping back on and wheeling the whole motorcycle through. Kicking out the stand again, Vincent sprung off the seat, locking the knob, sliding the deadbolt, and pushing the heavy chairs and a table in front of the door. He peeked between the blinds. The abyss stared back and he retreated with a shudder. 

“I should give you another stimpak,” Vincent said. A cold sweat leaked out of Sierra fearing the pain. She let Vincent pick her up, bring her to the second bed, and carefully set her down. She remained quiet as he unpacked his backpack of the necessary supplies—sterile dressing contained in a steel can, a bottle of orange-brown liquid, and the thick needle she dreaded. A little gasp escaped her. “You alright?” 

 “I don’t like needles.”

“I don’t either,” Vincent confessed. “I get a big one like this every week. I hate it, but I need it.”

“Why do you need it?”

“I’ll die if I don’t. That pain-killer I gave you earlier kickin’ in?” Sierra nodded. “You ready for the stimpak?”

Fingers fidgeted atop her stomach. She reluctantly turned on her side and squeezed her eyes shut. She felt the needle, but there was no pain. Just the cold of surgical grade steel penetrating her back. She winced at the strange sensation leaving her spine. Listened to the sounds behind her; the clicking of supplies. The zip of his backpack. The creak of the bed closer to the door. Sierra tugged down her shirt over the new dressing but he’d already done that.

“So what’s with the bottle cap? You know you only get a stupid toy badge for turning them in, right?”

Vincent’s brows furrowed and he glanced at her. “What?”

“Yeah, collect fifty of them and you get a Sunset Sarsparilla badge—It’s for little kids.”

His highway signs clattered pulling the leather straps from the vest. He carefully let the eroded and nicked license plates rest atop one another on the duvet. The I-15 badge topped all of them, glinting through the tarnish like the best days of his life rewinding in his head at lightning speed. “I found a cap with a blue star on it and thought it was neat so I kept it. Someone important to me made this out of it.”

Sierra had no more questions after that, content with watching either the ceiling or Vincent shuffle from bike to bed, sifting through the many pockets of his vest and bags and the motorcycle’s hidden compartments. He hadn’t noticed the silence creeping in while taking inventory of supplies. Weary eyes finally closed despite her best efforts while he peeled away the first layers of his bed, taking the duvet and thin white sheet beneath to the other bed to lay them gently over the girl. 

Three syringes of med-x and stimpaks remained. Three days to get the hell out of dodge.